


Lost and Found

by OrchisAilsa



Category: The Vampire Diaries & Related Fandoms, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Dirty Talk, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Post-Season/Series 02 AU, Romance, Rough Sex, Sassy Damon Salvatore, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-10-05
Packaged: 2018-12-31 08:52:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 48,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12128916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrchisAilsa/pseuds/OrchisAilsa
Summary: This story picks up after the Season 2 finale, when Stefan trades himself to Klaus in order to save Damon's life. AU after that point. Rated E for sexiness and violence.This was my first ever fanfiction, originally published on FF.net back in 2012. I decided to move it over here since I'm not active there anymore. Planning to add a chapter or two every day or so, until it's all posted. :-)





	1. Aftermath

They stared at each other with similarly dumbfounded expressions for a few minutes after Katherine's departure, trying to process a hundred thoughts and questions all at once. Was Damon really going to live? What had Stefan done to get this miracle cure? What did Klaus want with him? Where had he taken him? What had Katherine meant when she said Stefan had sacrificed everything? Neither of them had any answers.

Damon's mind was reeling. He was going to fucking live? How? No one survives a werewolf bite. He'd resigned himself to dying, he'd even made peace with it. Less than five minutes earlier he'd been fighting to maintain consciousness long enough for the world's sappiest deathbed confession of love, for God's sake. Why should his wicked, cruel self get to live another day when someone like Rose didn't get a second chance? And why, why the fuck couldn't Katherine have shown up just a few minutes earlier before he had a chance to bare his pathetic soul to a woman who was in love with his brother?

Elena was the first to break the silence, returning to sit beside him and gently taking his wounded arm in both her hands. He winced at her touch, as much out of fear that she would pity him for his emotional outburst as out of pain. He looked down at the infected gash to avoid meeting her eyes. It was still horrible, the disease was so far progressed, but if he wasn't mistaken it did look slightly less hideous than it had a few moments before.

"Are you really okay?" she whispered as she inspected the torn and angry flesh. Why was she being so gentle? He couldn't handle kindness well, didn't she know that? She touched him as though she was afraid he, the big scary vampire, might break in her hands. He couldn't remember ever having been caressed so tenderly.

Against his will his mind flashed back to the sweet feeling of her lips against his a few moments before. He hadn't kissed her, hadn't taken it from her. How many years had it been since a human had kissed him free of compulsion? Yet she had, of her own free will, her kiss full of sorrow and compassion and dismay and something that felt an awful lot like... love? She hadn't tried to hide her feelings from him, maybe because she didn't know she was broadcasting them as clear as if she'd been speaking, or maybe just because she'd thought it was a good-bye. He knew it wasn't going to last, though, if he was healing. Of course she was sad and emotional when he was dying- it's easy to feel such magnanimity when you know there's not going to be any follow-through required. Tomorrow everything would be back to normal and they'd just pretend like nothing had ever happened. The thought threatened to overwhelm him so he put it out of his mind and tried to focus on answering her question.

"Okay?... I... maybe?" His eyebrow quirked up in disbelief as he spoke. His head was clearing, he felt slightly less shaky. He still couldn't believe he was healing, but it seemed to be true. "My brain still feels kind of like it's on fire, but kind of a smaller fire than before. Maybe even more like a well-banked pit of glowing embers..."

He trailed off as Elena suddenly burst into sobs. Tears rolled down her face as her breath came in gasps. Damon, still slightly delirious and feverish, had no idea whether her tears were those of happiness or misery.

"Elena?" he asked softly, his voice scarcely more than a whisper, searching her face for clues and squeezing her hand as she held onto his.

"I'm sorry... I just... you...and... well..." She paused to force her breathing to slow and to gain enough composure to speak in clear sentences. "I just, every time I hope, every time I believe... my parents, Jenna, Isobel... even stupid John. Everyone dies." she sighed, and as she continued to speak her voice got very quiet. "I just, he promised me he could do it. He promised me he'd save you... and I just couldn't even let myself believe there was a chance. I just... I thought I was going to have to go through it all over again. I don't want to. I don't know if I can handle it. I don't want to lose anyone else. I can't."

Damon swallowed a lump of emotion in his throat as he collected the shaking girl into his arms. She buried her head in his shoulder and held onto him as if she was afraid he was about to disappear.

_To be fair, you almost did._

For a few minutes he just held her and let her cry, marveling in the feeling of being the one to soothe her pain rather than cause it. He'd caused her so much pain... Why had he caused her so much pain? Why had she ever forgiven him for the things he'd done?

 _My brain must really be fried,_ he thought, _because I have to be hallucinating. There is no way this girl is weeping tears of relief over MY survival. I've been a thorn in her side since I moved back here._

He did appear to be saved, though. He was starting to really believe it. His fever had broken and a dull itch in his arm told him it was healing, if slightly slower than he was used to.

 _But saved at what cost,_ his mind nagged, _what cost did your baby brother pay for your miserable excuse for a life? Katherine said he gave up everything... and she even sounded a little sad when she said it. What had Klaus done to make soulless, evil Katherine actually feel sorry for someone? And what can I possibly do to undo it?_

He sighed a weak, weary sigh against the top of Elena's head. He felt exhausted and completely lost. Ten minutes ago he'd been moments away from death, and now he needed to find some way to focus and get Stefan out of whatever mess he was in right now. He had no clue where to begin, but he would have to find a way. He had to, for Elena. It was the only thing he could think of to offer her. He would save Stefan, and he would give her the happily-ever-after she deserved, as much as was possible with a life full of witches and vampires and werewolves.

"You hear that, Elena?" he asked her aloud. "The poor bastard found a way to save me, and now I'm just going to have to save him right back. After all, anything he can do, I can do better, right?"

He got no response, though. Elena, overwrought and beyond exhausted from the events of the past few days, had finally succumbed to unconsciousness in his arms.

 _So fragile,_ he thought as he held her, breathing in the clean scent of her shampoo as it mingled with the smell of Katherine's perfume which still hung in the air, _and so young, as delicate as a bird. You've been through hell a dozen times over... you've lost so much: the parents who raised you... the parents you barely knew... Jenna who tried so hard to be there for you... and however many classmates and friends caught in the absurd supernatural crossfire that plagues this town. I promise you with everything I am that we will NOT add the love of your life to that list. I will find him for you, and together we will save him. I swear it._

With that thought Damon held her just a little closer, and drifted off into a deep, healing sleep.

* * *

Her first thought as she drifted into consciousness was that she was absolutely safe. She was wrapped in strong, powerful arms and cradled against a cool, muscular chest. Stefan slept over frequently enough that the feeling was familiar and comfortable. But somehow this time it felt off, not quite right. As she woke up further she realized that she felt different because the arms that held her so tenderly were not Stefan's, but Damon's. That thought jolted her awake as the events of yesterday flooded back to her. Stefan couldn't hold her, because he was missing. As she began to stir Damon's arms tightened around her ever so slightly, as though he was reluctant to let her go.

_"I've made a lot of choices that have gotten me here. I deserve this. I deserve to die."_

_"No..." she shifted down to meet his eyes, and the sincerity she saw there broke her heart,"you don't."_

_"I do, Elena, and it's okay. 'cause if I'd chosen differently I wouldn't have met you. I'm so sorry. I've done so many things to hurt you."_

_He's in absolute agony, on his deathbed, and he's talking about your pain? "It's okay," she tried to smile at him through her tears, "I forgive you."_

_"I know you love Stefan, and it will always be Stefan..." her own words sounded so cruel echoed on his lips, "But I love you...you should know that."_

_"I do..."_

He loved her. Convinced he'd never have her, he'd only told her because he thought it was over for him. She told him she knew, but did she really, before he told her? She had known, certainly, that he wanted her. She'd thought for a long time it was just to enrage his jealous brother, then she thought that he cared for her because she wore his beloved Katherine's face. Maybe that was all true in the beginning, and she had to believe it probably was, but at some point those superficial and petty games had faded and she'd become more to him than she ever could have thought.

 _"I thought he was too broken to have such pure emotions,"_ she thought, and hated herself for a minute.

Turning within his grasp she took a moment to look at his face. He was angelic as he slept, flawless and somehow softer than usual, without the cruel smirk he normally wore.

"Y _ou should have met me in 1864. You would have liked me."_

_"I like you now, just the way you are."_

She hadn't realized how true that was until the words left her lips.

_And then you almost lost him, like you lose everyone._

But she hadn't lost him. He was okay now because Stefan saved him. Her heart swelled with relief over Damon and worry for Stefan. Tears sprang into her eyes, uninvited.

Damon of course picked that moment to open his eyes, raising a sleepy eyebrow at her.

"Really, Elena, I know I'm not at my best in the morning, but hysterics seem like a bit of an overreaction, don't you think?"

She rolled her eyes at him. He rolled his back at her, mocking.

"You must be feeling better, you're as impossible as ever."

He responded with a flash of his pain-in-the-ass grin, which was marred for a split second by a wince of pain.

"Are you okay?" she asked, suddenly alarmed.

"Better than I expected to feel today," he quipped, "but still not a hundred percent. I'm also...um... a bit hungry." He punctuated the statement with a pointed glance down at her throat, which was still sporting his tooth marks from his unwitting attack during his fevered hallucinations the night before.

In the not-so-distant past his words would have seriously disturbed or even frightened Elena, but no longer. Months of dating Stefan and being up to her ass in vampiric drama had desensitized her to the idea of being a food group, and she knew that Damon in his right mind would never willingly hurt her, so rather than shrinking away she reached forward, brushed the hair out of his face, and smiled as she said, "Wait here and I'll go grab you a snack."

She knew he'd never say so, but she saw his appreciation of her nonchalant acceptance of his nature reflected in his uncharacteristically unguarded eyes as she stood and started to make her way to the bedroom door.

She hesitated for a second with her hand on the doorknob, knowing somehow that as soon as she returned their peaceful little cocoon would be invaded by worries about Stefan, plans with Jeremy and Alaric, and a million other real-world concerns. There was nothing to do about that, though, so she smiled at him and left the room, heading to the basement to find him a few bags of blood.

 _What on earth?_ she thought as she left the room. Surely this man was some impostor and the real, snarky, evil and unhinged Damon was hiding in the closet waiting for the best moment to come out and laugh in her face. But he hadn't.

She'd never seen those blue eyes so open and genuine before, had never seen a smile that didn't have an ulterior motive behind it. But the way he was looking at her... the things he'd said last night... his deathbed confession had been so sweet, so pure, so honorable. He loved her. He loved her hopelessly, devoted utterly despite the fact that she'd told him he'd never stand a chance, that it would always be Stefan who held her heart. Such feelings without reciprocation must be agony, she thought sadly. She had no idea how to handle him. When she kissed him he _thanked_ her, for God's sake. He thanked her because he knew she'd never have done it if he weren't dying. She felt sick at the thought.

 _But why?_ her traitorous brain asked, _it's just the truth. You're in love with his brother- you don't need to be kissing him at all._

That thought made her feel even worse. She wasn't about to examine those feelings right now, though. Nope. Not a chance. The real world was far too fucked up for her to worry about her love life just this second.

 _What are we going to do now?_ She sighed heavily as she reached the basement and thoughts of the world outside of this house started to plague her.

With Jenna gone she was about to have to go through the custody dance all over again, and while she was pretty sure she was old enough to apply for emancipation, she wasn't sure about Jeremy. Who would they live with, though? They were out of living relatives! She had to figure something out, though. Something that would keep them in Mystic Falls. If she had to leave before they found Stefan... Maybe Alaric would have some answers for them, but then, Alaric was probably feeling as lost and broken as she was right now. This would all be easier to deal with, too, if she wasn't so worried about Stefan.

"Stefan what did you do?" she asked the empty room as she fished in the refrigerator for the most freshly-dated bags of blood to bring up to Damon. _And why won't you return my messages?_ The seemingly ever-present knot in her stomach tightened at the thought, but she shook her head and put on her game face as she walked back towards Damon's room. She needed to be strong right now, at least until Damon was totally better.

 _Damon who is going to live, and who is in love with you,_ her brain reminded her. _What are you going to do about that? How do you feel about that? About him?_

Another sigh escaped her as she shoved that particular turmoil of emotions to the back of her mind again. There were too many things going on to make any kind of big deal over the things that were said las night, she resolved, too much at stake to feel awkward. They would just have to keep on going, find Stefan, and then everything would work itself out.

 _We will be fine,_ she insisted to herself, _just fine._


	2. Playing with Fire

Blood in hand Elena made her way back to the bedroom. On the staircase her heart nearly stopped as a familiar buzzing in her pocket declared she had received a text message.

"Stefan?" she exclaimed aloud, scrambling to answer it, but it wasn't. It was Alaric checking in, asking if it was okay to swing by after breakfast to check on her and Damon.

She dialed his number and they talked briefly, each calmly assuring the other that Damon and Jeremy were both doing as well as could be expected (though Elena nearly panicked when Alaric told her briefly what had happened to Jeremy the night before, and Alaric was deeply upset to discover that Stefan was missing), and establishing that Alaric would bring Jeremy by the house in about an hour's time to regroup and figure out what to do about the Stefan situation.

"This is my life," she muttered to herself as she hung up the phone, "a constant state of damage control as we move from one God-damned disaster to the next."

Then she heaved a sigh, told herself to stop wallowing in self-pity, and opened Damon's bedroom door with a brave smile plastered on her face.

"Hey, Damon," she called, seeing that he'd gone into the bathroom in her absence, "it's me. Just a head's up, Ric and Jeremy are going to be here soon, in case you wanna freshen up and...ah..." her sentence faded away as he emerged from the bathroom, skin still rosy and glistening from a hot shower and wearing nothing but a fluffy white towel wrapped carelessly across his perfectly sculpted hips. His upper body was pale and as flawless as a marble statue; from his powerful shoulders to his amazing pecs to his six pack abs and the delicate trail of dark hairs that teased their way down behind the towel, every trace of the horrifying virus was gone and Damon was back to his normal, gorgeous, unreasonably sexy self.

 _He looks awfully good for a man who was on his deathbed twelve hours ago_ , she thought as her mouth went dry and a jolt of animalistic desire shot through her lower abdomen. God, he was so, so beautiful. She had to consciously remind herself that she wasn't supposed to just walk over and touch him right now. Why was that, again? Touching him sounded like an amazing idea right about now. Almost as good as licking him.

"Yeah, I heard you on the phone," Damon replied mildly, as though she'd actually finished her thought rather than forgetting how to speak and just gawking at him instead. "I figured I'd get a head start and get myself cleaned up a bit."

"G-good idea," she stammered, and silently cursed him for being able to affect her composure so deeply. "I... uh... should probably do the same." She didn't move a muscle to do so, however.

He glanced at her with an amused half-smile, his only acknowledgement of her discomfiture, and turned away from her, rummaging in the dresser for a minute to retrieve a pair of dark wash jeans and a tight black t-shirt. Then, as though she wasn't even in the room, he dropped his towel and treated her to the sight of him stepping into the jeans and sliding them over his sinewy calves, his muscular thighs, his gorgeously defined hips, his perfect-

"Well, you should probably get on that whole showering thing," he said, turning to face her as he buttoned his fly, t-shirt slung over one chiseled, bare shoulder. "Unless you're waiting for something?"

He smiled mischievously and his gorgeous blue eyes sparkled as he walked towards her to take the forgotten bags of blood out of her hands with a nod of thanks. She blushed crimson as he approached, and the scent of his sandalwood shampoo doubled- no, tripled the ache she felt in her core at the sight of him. As he winked at her, though, she grew suddenly annoyed.

The bastard was baiting her on purpose! Was this how he intended to avoid feeling awkward about the things he'd said last night? He was going to take her physical attraction to him and turn it against her? How unfair!

 _Well,_ she thought, _if this is how he wants to play it, this is how we will play it. But I can play hardball just as well as he can, and he'll never see this coming._

"Actually," she said mildly, regaining her composure through her irritation and smiling brightly at him, "I was going to ask if I could use your bathroom. It seems silly to mess up any of the others."

He looked at her with interest, as though he was trying to figure out her game, then gestured gallantly towards the door saying, "At your leisure, Milady."

She inclined her head politely in response, then, holding his eye contact the entire time, she kicked off her shoes and slowly slid her own pants down over her hips, past her thighs and off, one foot at a time, taking her time to stretch her back, stand again and then slowly pull her shirt over her head and toss it with abandon to the ground behind her. Now she was wearing nothing but lacy blue boy shorts and a matching bra and it was Damon's turn to stand silent and riveted at the sight in front of him, eyes dark with smoldering lust and a barely-leashed hunger that made her feel butterflies in her stomach.

She was playing with fire, she knew. He was at least ten times stronger than she was and if he wanted her there was no way she could ever stop him from taking her. The thought should have frightened her, but it just excited her further and caused her breath to speed up with anticipation. Finally letting her eyes stray from his she looked his still-shirtless body over appraisingly, noticing with satisfaction that his jeans and his decision to forgo underwear did nothing to conceal his state of arousal. The sight of his erection pressing tight against the zipper of his pants made her feel powerful and in control, even as it made her painfully aware of the slick dampness of her own sex within its lacy cage. She wasn't done with him yet, though. Smiling mildly at him she ran her hands through her hair and down the length of her body, then turned and walked towards the bathroom, reaching behind her to unhook her bra and drop it carelessly on the carpet as she went, not looking back again until the door was closed securely behind her.

* * *

 _What the hell are you thinking?_ She thought as she let herself slump against the door, shutting her eyes and blushing furiously. The image of Damon staring at her with the predatory intensity of his desire was now burned onto the backs of her eyelids. And her own body was quivering with lust so strong it was all she could do to keep herself from marching right back into the bedroom and tumbling both of them into his bed to show him exactly what she wanted to do to him.

 _And what exactly do you want to do with him?_ her traitorous mind demanded to know. _Certainly nothing you should want to be doing with your missing boyfriend's big brother, Elena._

That thought sobered her up a bit. She reached over to turn on the shower, a bit colder than normal, and ran her hands through her hair before taking off her soaking panties and stepping inside. How could she be acting this way, like some sort of brazen hussy, having no idea where Stefan was or whether he was even alive?

 _Oh, Stefan, I hope you're okay..._ the flood of tenderness and concern that constricted her chest at the thought of him was disturbing considering her body was still humming with desire for his brother's touch.

 _Stefan deserves better than this,_ she chided herself silently as she soaped her body and shampooed her hair. _He treats you like you're made of gold. You are his reason for living, a precious thing that he cherishes above everything else in the world. When you thought you were going to wake up a vampire last week he spent a whole day making you feel like the universe wasn't going to end, and then he almost died for you, for the five millionth time, trying to save Jenna and Bonnie and EVERYONE and fix your family. He is a perfect boyfriend, beautiful and sexy and thoughtful and kind, and when you're together he treats you with such reverence that you feel like an angel or a goddess in his arms. He's only not here now because he couldn't just sit by and watch his brother die, because he loves him too much to let him go. He deserves better from his girlfriend AND his brother than what you're affording him, flirting with each other like a couple of drunk idiots at a frat party. This stops now. NOW._

Stepping out of the tub with newfound resolve she dried off and crept tentatively out into the bedroom, grateful beyond words that Damon was nowhere in sight. She hurriedly collected her discarded clothes, then tiptoed to Stefan's room and found some plaid pajama pants and a tank top she'd left there. She dressed quickly, throwing one of Stefan's white button-downs over everything to further cover her body and hide her shape. Then she brushed out her hair, brushed her teeth and headed downstairs to grab a bite of breakfast before Alaric and Jeremy arrived.

Reaching the kitchen she was greeted by the smell of coffee, bacon, and... French toast? Indeed she wasn't mistaken, and as soon as she came in the room Damon, dressed now but still endearingly barefooted and damp haired, handed her a plate, a tall mug, and directed her to sit at the immaculately set table complete with powdered sugar and maple syrup.

"You cooked," she remarked stupidly, reaching for the (freshly warmed!) milk to add to her coffee.

"You sound surprised," he replied with a pleasant smile, no indication whatsoever in his face about the intensity of the moments they'd shared less than half an hour before in his bedroom.

 _Great,_ she thought, _one more thing we'll never talk about again... one more log on the fire._

Aloud she said, "Well, I am a bit. I don't expect vampires to be able to cook. You don't eat, after all."

"I can eat if I want to," he said, a tad defensively, "and if I do I'd rather it be well-prepared. Besides, I do have house guests, on occasion, and it's customary to cook a woman breakfast as a sign of appreciation for her company the night before. Especially if she's kind enough to provide my dinner," he added with a devilish grin.

Elena rolled her eyes, but was spared having to respond by a knock at the front door.

"It's open!" Damon called, and a few seconds later Alaric and Jeremy walked into the kitchen, both looking like they could have slept better.

Elena stood and flung her arms around her brother, grateful beyond words that he was okay, safe, alive. He held her back, just as fiercely. She wondered for a moment if normal siblings ever shared moments like this, and thought they probably didn't. It made her strangely thankful for how her life had turned out- she never took little things like a hug for granted anymore. Releasing Jeremy, who gratefully took the cup of coffee Damon proffered to him, she raised her eyes to meet Alaric's, which were full of sad, tired emotions. Though she couldn't remember ever doing so before, she wordlessly approached him and slid her arms under his, wrapping them around his muscular back and resting her head for a moment against his warm, solid shoulder. After a moment of surprised tension Ric relaxed and returned her warm embrace, the two of them taking a brief moment of shared comfort between two people who always ended up having to be strong for the sake of others. Pulling back she met his eyes, which were full of unshed tears. Having no words of comfort to offer him that would have meant anything at all, she said nothing, just smiled sadly and squeezed his hands before releasing him and passing him his own cup of coffee. It was enough.

"So," Alaric said, breaking the silence as they all sat down around the table together, "I'll bet you three bacon strips that my day yesterday was weirder and more stressful than yours."

"You're on," Elena said, and they all chuckled mirthlessly before launching into retelling the exhausting series of events that led them to sitting at Damon's table together this morning.


	3. Hopes and Fears

Even listening to people talk about what had been going on for the past forty eight hours was exhausting. The fact that Jeremy had died because of a bullet Damon dodged made him feel like shit, even though he knew intellectually he couldn't possibly be blamed. After the whole neck-snapping incident in Elena's bedroom that time the idea of keeping the boy alive had seemed like a good one, for her sake at least. Brooding, he sat quietly and let Elena recount the events of the night before to Alaric and Jeremy (he'd been too out of it and hallucinatory at the time to contribute much to the conversation anyway), sipping on his third glass of blood for the morning. Though he was doing his damndest not to show it, he still felt really off-kilter. He suspected that the bagged blood just wasn't doing the trick as well as it should and made a mental note to go hunting for the fresh stuff as soon as he got a chance after sundown.

As he half-listened to what the three humans were saying his mind wandered to the scene that had just played out that morning between him and Elena. He had done what he'd done to get a rise out of her, he didn't deny it. He wanted to throw her off, detract attention from the proverbial elephant in the room and put some emotional distance between them and the vulnerability and sincerity of the tenderness they'd shared the night before. He was certain she'd be irritated and defensive. He hoped she'd be captivated and aroused. Never in a million years, though, had he expected her to call his bluff and do a God-damned strip tease to drive him slowly insane while her beautiful, deep brown eyes held him captive and just _dared_ him to touch her. God, had he wanted to touch her.

Her actions, so out-of-character for sweet, modest, sensible Elena, had absolutely blindsided him, and that just made the scene even more impossible to get out of his mind, because after 150 years of being a vampire there wasn't much that legitimately shocked him. He'd held himself completely immobile as she'd stripped, absolutely certain that if he did so much as blink his body was going to hijack him and the next thing he'd be aware of would be holding her flush against the wall with his teeth in her throat and his fingers buried inside her hot, wet core. Her body wanted him just as badly, he knew; he could smell her arousal from across the room, and the way she hungrily looked his body over as she undressed left absolutely no room for doubt. Still, he knew better than most people that what the body and the mind want are often in disagreement, and so he'd permitted her retreat, waiting until she shut the bathroom door to collapse wild-eyed onto the edge of his bed and tear into one of the blood bags she'd fetched like a feral animal, desperate to take the edge off of at least one of his hungers, and praying he could get control over his body and calm down without having to jerk off like a fifteen-year-old kid with his first internet connection.

 _What on Earth came over her? It's probably just stress making her act that way,_ he told himself. _Stress makes people do all sorts of weird stuff when they don't have healthy outlets. Look at Stefan, for God's sake..._

Whatever the reason, though, if she was trying to drive him to distraction she'd absolutely succeeded, and his only solace was that he was pretty sure she'd even scandalized herself in the process. She'd come down from her shower wearing shapeless layers of flannel and cotton like they were armor, and would barely meet his eyes now even when she spoke to him.

 _As if there's any amount of plaid you could wear to make me stop wanting you,_ he thought _. Nice try, though. If I wasn't such a pitiful mess it might have worked._ Then, annoyed at the self-indulgence of his own thoughts, he turned his attention back to the three humans and tried to focus on their conversation.

"But where do we even _start_ looking for him?" the Gilbert boy was asking, wide-eyed as usual.

"I have no idea," Elena confessed, absolutely forlorn. "He won't answer my calls... or return my texts... and Klaus could have taken him halfway around the world by now. He could literally be anywhere, and we don't even really know if he's alive or dead."

"He isn't dead. Klaus wouldn't have bargained something as precious as that cure just to turn around and off the kid. He'll find a way to contact us, Elena," Alaric insisted, and Damon wondered idly if Elena's human ears could pick up the undercurrents of doubt and fear in his voice. "He must know you're worried sick. In the meantime I know you're dying to do something productive, so we can go to my place where Klaus was keeping Katherine hostage and see if they left any clues at all to indicate what might have happened. That was the last place anyone saw him, after all."

Elena nodded bleakly, staring off into space. Damon was reminded of her tearful words the night before, explaining that she'd forgotten how to hope, that everyone always dies, and his heart ached miserably. He reached over to tentatively brush her knee under the table with his fingertips, longing to comfort her, but she jumped, startled, and pulled away almost reflexively from his touch, folding in further on herself. He withdrew his hand feeling like a fumbling idiot and the misery in his gut just intensified.

 _She's not yours to comfort, you moron, and the one she wants isn't here,_ he chided himself, plastering a neutral expression on his face to hide his self-pity and disgust. He hoped to God she'd never know how much her little actions affected him, what power she held over him. Abandoning his attempts to touch her, he instead leaned forward to catch her eye, trying to ignore how pathetically grateful he was when she didn't look away.

"Listen to me, Elena," he said softly, and though she didn't respond she held his gaze, "I know you're upset, but please remember that you've known Stefan for what, eight months? I've been putting up with him for 145 years since we turned, and frankly, I've gotten used to having his whiney ass around. Neither one of us would have a clue what to do if we weren't busy being the thorn in each other's sides. So I promise you, I am going to find my brother. I will bring him home to you. I will not stop until I have. Do you understand me?"

"I do," she said, looking away as her lip trembled slightly. She understood, but she still didn't believe, didn't hope. Damon sighed and sat back in his chair.

Alaric and Jeremy sat staring, both of them entirely unaccustomed to this serious, sincere Damon. The silence over the table was so heavy that when Jeremy's phone beeped all three humans jumped a mile.

"Stefan?" Elena asked meekly, though everyone knew he would have had absolutely no reason to contact Jeremy at all.

"Nah," he said apologetically, as though he could control who was on the other end of the line, "it's just a text from Bonnie. Is it okay if she and Caroline swing by? I have a few things I need to ask her about this whole, uh, 'coming back from the dead' thing."

"Of course they can," Elena said quickly, and Damon opted not to point out that this was _his_ house and therefore not really her place to give permissions. "Are you okay?"

"Oh, I'm good," he said, unconvincingly, "Don't worry about it. I just have a couple things to ask, that's all."

Elena nodded skeptically, but apparently decided not to pursue the issue. Instead she changed the subject.

"On a totally unrelated note," she said, "how long do you think it's going to be before Child Services starts knocking on our door and trying to farm us out to foster care?"

"Actually," Alaric said, almost shy all of a sudden,"Jeremy and I spent some time talking about this on the way over. Since you don't really have any living relatives at this point, except for a few distant cousins you've never met, it's a bit of a sticky situation. You, my dear, are totally in the clear since you turned eighteen in March. Even though you're still in high school, you're technically an adult and you can be officially responsible for yourself in all legal capacities. As for Jeremy, it's a little harder. Foster care would be the default, but he'd have to move and maybe switch schools and I am sure neither of you would be okay with that. We want to find a situation that's acceptable and comfortable for you both; we definitely don't want to separate you two or move you out of town. So, I was thinking that the best thing would be for me to apply to be his legal guardian myself, if you don't have any objections. I think it's what Jenna would have wanted, and while I can't say I ever considered my being a trained vampire hunter as a parenting skill, _per se,_ with you two Gilberts it seems to be a really handy skill set to have..." he trailed off because Elena had leaped up and run around the table to wrap her arms around him and Jeremy at the same time.

"Yes!" she exclaimed, "Yes, of course. I can't think of anything in the world we'd rather. The fact that you'd be willing to take on this kind of responsibility for us... you're incredible. Thank you, Ric. Thank you."

As she held them both close, Damon felt an unwelcome pang of jealousy at this glowing thread of happiness they were all sharing amid the turmoil of their lives.

 _This is acceptance,_ he thought, _siblings who love each other and even LIKE each other, and an adult who truly cares about them, regardless of any supernatural entanglements that may happen. This is something you don't have, something you've never really had, even..._ BEFORE, despite all appearances _. This is a real family._

As the doorbell rang Damon took the opportunity to excuse himself and answer it, even though it still wasn't locked. He ushered Caroline and Bonnie into the kitchen for another round of over-emotional greetings, hugs, and possibly tears but he didn't follow, turning instead to go into the study and crack open a new bottle of his favorite Glenlivet scotch.

 _It's five o'clock in England,_ he thought, pouring himself a generous double, _good enough for me._

As he sipped his single malt he listened through the walls to Elena showering Bonnie with thanks for saving Jeremy's life, to Alaric's teasing comments that Bonnie's actions were probably not entirely for Elena's benefit considering how she and Jeremy were looking at each other, to Caroline's tentative hopes that her mother could grow to accept her as a vampire. At the latter he scoffed aloud to himself.

 _Good luck with that, Barbie Doll,_ he thought bitterly, _it worked out so well for Stefan and me, after all._ With that thought he knocked back the remainder of his drink and stood, meaning to go to the basement for just a little more blood to tide him over until he could go hunting that evening. As he left the study, however, he felt his cell phone buzz in his pocket. Pulling it out he saw he had a text from an unfamiliar number, which read:

 _The trade was your life for 10 yrs of hunting w/ The Ripper_  
He downed 12+ blood bags for insurance, b4 I left  
They're both hunting me now... willingly  
Don't try and be stupid, or she'll end up losing you both.  
-K 

Damon stared at the screen in horrified silence for a moment, then tried to call the number back. A computerized voice told him cheerfully that it was sorry, but the number he was trying to call had been disconnected. He dialed it four more times before growling out a colorful string of obscenities in four languages and hurling his glass as hard as he could against the wall. It shattered into countless pieces, but brought him no satisfaction.

"God. Fucking. Dammit!" he hissed, sinking into his favorite leather chair and cradling his head in his hands as three humans, a witch and a vampire came rushing in from the kitchen.

"What happened? What's going on?" Elena's voice was about an octave higher than normal as she sank to her knees in front of him and stared pleadingly up into his eyes. It was his turn to offer her a sad half-smile. When he spoke he heard his own voice break with overwhelming worry.

"Everything," he said shakily, "is so much worse than we thought."


	4. Food for Thought

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves something resembling plot, rather than just FEELINGS (though there are some feelings too), and Elena learns a few things she never knew about how it is being a vampire. Let me know what you think!

After an hour of listening to horrible tales of Stefan on blood benders in the late 19th century and anxiously watching Damon trying unsuccessfully to reach Katherine via every phone number she'd ever used to contact him, Elena sat in the library with Damon, Alaric and Caroline, trying to think whether there was anything they could do to find a Stefan who might not actually _want_ to be found. So far the outlook was bleak. After talking in circles for a while and coming up with no viable course of action, Bonnie and Jeremy had headed out to the Gilbert home to talk privately about whatever questions Jeremy had for her regarding his resurrection. Part of Elena was upset that he would talk to Bonnie and not her, but a larger, more rational part of her understood, was glad he felt like there was someone he felt he _could_ go to for help and advice, and tried not to take it too personally. It wasn't as if she didn't have enough on her plate to worry about, after all.

Try as she might Elena couldn't imagine Stefan as a bloodthirsty mass murderer, even though she'd seen him in the throes of his human blood addiction. The idea of him participating in anything resembling cold-blooded slaughter, genocide even, was so far removed from her realm of rational possibilities that she couldn't even make herself feel appropriately panicked at the thought, just slightly numb. Still, the glazed-over look in Damon's eyes as he spoke forced her to remember that there was a lot of time that had passed before she'd come into these brothers' lives, and that despite her intense feelings for Stefan she really didn't know much at all about over a hundred of those years.

Damon looked weary, even a little lost, and the expression was so alien on his face it alarmed her. He always had a plan, after all. Usually it was a terrible plan that didn't take the value of her loved ones' lives into account. Often it was a plan that directly interfered with other, more sensible plans... but he always had a plan. To see him sitting docile and listening to Alaric without offering any challenges or making any infuriating suggestions was downright disturbing.

"Well," Alaric was saying, "Regardless of whether he actually wants to be found we should probably stick with my original suggestion to go check out my apartment and see what they left behind. A text message from Katherine should hardly be accepted as gospel truth without question."

"For real," Caroline piped in, nodding her agreement. "It's so weird. I mean, why would she even bother to call at all? What's in it for her?"

Damon laughed, but it wasn't a happy sound. "Because," he said in a voice totally devoid of emotion, "there's a chance that if we start looking now we will find Stefan and Klaus before they manage to track her down. We would distract them from their hunt long enough for her to have a much better chance at making a clean getaway for Maui or Antarctica or wherever else she's opted to hide from him for the next couple of decades. She knows we won't leave Stefan to rot, and she's using that to her advantage."

Sighing, he knit his brow and pinched the bridge of his nose like his head hurt. Elena looked him over, even more worried now. Did vampires even _get_ headaches? They didn't, did they?

"Damon," she said softly, "how are you feeling?"

He turned to her with a mocking smile on his face and snorted, "I'm just peachy, Elena. I mean, why shouldn't I be? It's not like anything is out of the ordinary or anything. So what if my psychotic ex-girlfriend is trying to use me as cannon fodder to save her own sorry ass from the _oldest and most powerful vampire that has ever lived,_ who is also a werewolf, who is hunting her with the help of my little brother who is strung out like a god-damned crack addict because he can't handle a belly-full of blood? So what if that prudish, sanctimonious brother of mine is on a murdering bender and his current favorite activities include dramatically goring entire communities of innocent humans and then Jackson Pollock-ing the walls of their homes with their blood once he's too full to drink anymore? Why should I not be okay? It's not like that's different than any other Sunday afternoon, really. Next I might watch some baseball."

Elena's stomach turned at the mental image his words painted in her head, but she refused to be distracted from her question.

"I meant physically," she replied calmly, "I was asking how you're feeling physically. You still don't look yourself."

Damon blinked at her in silence, surprised, though whether it was surprise that she'd noticed he wasn't well or shock that she cared enough to ask about it she couldn't have guessed.. She simply held his gaze and elected not to remark on the fact that he'd reflexively chosen to answer her question with a tirade of concern about Stefan rather than any of the ego-centric babble he normally spouted off. She'd noticed it, though. She thought it was amazing, how far he'd come from the sociopathic loner with the switched-off emotions she'd met just a few months before, and the thought made her smile a little, despite the misery of the day.

"I'm...okay," he conceded after a few moments of silence. "I'm not a hundred percent, but since I'm literally the only vampire who has ever survived a werewolf bite I'm not really sure what the rate of recovery is generally supposed to be." Elena must have looked distressed, because he continued quickly, "I probably just need some blood straight from the source rather than served over ice. Fresher means healthier and more full of all my necessary vampire-y vitamins and minerals. I'm planning on going hunting later, and I'm sure I'll be fit as a fiddle and ready to track down my little bro in no time at all."

Elena didn't like the idea of him hunting that night one bit. If he really wasn't feeling up to par, there was a much larger chance something could go wrong. What if he wasn't strong enough to compel his victim correctly? What if something happened to him? She couldn't really voice those concerns, though, without sounding like an overbearing mom, so she settled for asking, "Where were you planning on hunting?"

"Don't you worry your pretty little head about that, Elena my dear," he replied. His flippant attitude and condescending smile irked her.

"Don't be a jerk. I just think you shouldn't hunt in town right now, since there's been so much violence on the news already, lately, and especially because we're not really sure whether Sheriff Forbes is even going to let you continue to live here. She's really trying to see how you're not an asshole and a murderer right now, but fresh victims are not really going to make a good case for you." Caroline looked uncomfortable at the mention of her mother, but said nothing. Damon rolled his eyes.

"Like I said," he was growing testy now, "don't worry about it, Elena. I'm planning on dining outside Mystic Falls tonight. No need to give vampires any more bad press around here these days."

But where would he go? How long would he be gone? And how would they help him if he got in trouble? Elena was going crazy with worry about Stefan. She didn't know if she could handle worrying about Damon at the same time.

"Just... please don't leave!" she said, and the level of upset in her voice had all three of her friends turn to stare at her as though she'd grown an extra head. She couldn't blame them, she supposed. Why did the thought of Damon going to hunt bother her so much? Since when did she care so much about his level of personal safety? He'd been living and hunting very successfully for almost two centuries without any help from her or anyone else, after all. But she didn't want him to go, so though it sounded completely irrational she just sat quietly and let her comment hang heavy in the air.

"Well, then," Damon said in his most patronizing tone, "what would you have me do, Princess? I'm a hunter, and I need to hunt in order to eat. I can't just order my dinner in like a pizza, and clearly the bagged stuff isn't doing the trick. I have zero more ideas regarding how to get me better quicker."

She felt flustered and silly, but she didn't want to back down.

"Just, please be safe until you get your health and strength totally back. Please. You don't have to go out of town or hunt strangers. You...you can just drink _my_ blood."

Where had that offer come from? She wondered at her own mental health even as the words were leaving her lips. Alaric coughed and Caroline made a quick gasping noise.

Damon liked that idea, she could tell. He liked that idea very much. His eyes darkened and she could tell that his fangs had started to extend at the thought of tapping her vein. So she was very surprised when he looked away and said, "No can do, hon. You're... Elena. You aren't food."

What the hell was that supposed to mean? Why on earth should the fact that he considered her a person make a difference? Did he honestly prefer his victims compelled and non-consenting? She didn't have time to dwell on it, though, because he was still talking, his voice ever-so-slightly distorted by his extended fangs.

"Even if I could treat you like dinner, you're too full of vervain right now to be any use to me. I might have been building up a tolerance lately, and I might be able to actually stomach it, but your blood still would probably do me more harm than good at this point. Besides," he paused to reach over and run a finger over the ugly bruise and broken skin on her neck that she still wore from his hallucinatory attack the night before, "don't you think I've done enough damage to your veins recently?" He offered her a small smile then, full of so much regret and sorrow it took her breath away.

For a moment time seemed to freeze as she gazed into his eyes, dark and glistening with the changes the bloodlust brought over his features. Her throat felt electrified where his fingers had brushed it, on fire where they rested now. His touch was gentle, almost delicate, but the dark, predatory look in his eyes and the tips of his fangs indenting his lower lip reminded her of all the violence and destruction he was capable of, that he was holding in check at all times. Stefan had always hidden this part of himself from her, ashamed of his nature, but Damon was not ashamed, he embraced and even reveled in his darker side, and the juxtaposition of his tenderness towards her with that barely-leashed, animalistic power was absolutely intoxicating. Also, she thought she must be imagining it, but she swore she could feel the urgent pulse of his desire for her through the feathery touch of his fingers on her skin, and her own fickle body was melting inside in response, filling her with wants and needs she'd never experienced before. Not trusting herself to move or speak she simply stood and concentrated on breathing normally, trying hard not to think about how scary it was that the only thing on earth she wanted in that moment was for him to take her offer and sink his fangs back into her throat.

Alaric thankfully picked that second to interrupt, breaking the mood of the trance-like moment that had descended over Elena and Damon. The two of them tried quickly to snap out of it. He snatched his hand away from her neck, she looked at the ground and tried to compose herself. Caroline came up and put a hand on Elena's shoulder, checking in on her silently. Elena smiled gratefully at her.

"You could feed on me, if you need to," Alaric was saying to Damon. "I know you don't care so much whether I'm 'dinner' or not, and I, uh, don't have any vervain in my system these days," he muttered sheepishly. "After Jenna died I just... yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck and looked at the ground.

Damon, whose fangs had retracted and features had returned to normal, rolled his eyes and turned to him, standing abruptly and walking into his personal space. Elena sighed inwardly. Apparently, in typical Damon fashion, he was going to distract himself from whatever emotions he'd just been experiencing by acting excessively confrontational for no reason. Lovely.

"What? You didn't think it mattered anymore? Clearly all danger of mind control by vampire is past now, after all. Or are you just bored? Or sad? You'd rather indulge in a passive death wish by opening yourself up to compulsion than feel a little lonely?"

Alaric rounded on Damon then, angry, his eyes regaining a hint of the fire they usually had in them. "Right, a passive death wish. That's totally it. Because my daily dose of vervain did so much to protect me from being _possessed_ and blacking out for days of my life when it mattered. It totally had nothing to do with having a few things on my mind, like knowing both my ex-wife and my girlfriend both died awful, horrible vampire deaths within a few days of each other, or having to set aside the whole grieving thing to deal with the idea of becoming the only living parental figure to two teenagers who have spent the last year of their lives dealing with more fucked up shit than any kids should ever have to endure. It's not that I forgot to drink the damn tea, it was clearly all just a fucking attempt to kill myself through inaction. You should know all about that, what with the sunbathing you decided to do the other day."

Elena's head snapped up in alarm, and Caroline's grip tightened slightly on her shoulder.

"What do you mean, sunbathing? What did you do?" she heard the panic in her own voice.

"Don't worry about it, Elena," Damon sneered, glaring at Alaric. "Saint Stefan di Salvatore intervened and locked me up before I could do any permanent damage. It's a shame, too, isn't it? I'd already made peace with my death, even if I wasn't particularly excited about it, and if he hadn't stopped me he'd still be here with you right now."

Her heart leaped into her throat at the thought of Damon committing suicide. How could he have even contemplated such a thing? If he'd succeeded... they never would have shared that night last night, she never could have forgiven him for all the things she had, she never would have heard him say he loved her... She was overwhelmed by an acute sense of profound loneliness. She would not cry. _She would NOT CRY._

"He'd be here," she said carefully, "and safe, and that would be amazing. But you wouldn't, because you'd be dead forever. That's not really an acceptable alternative. Now please, please stop picking fights for like, ten minutes, and let either me or Alaric give you some blood. We're trying to help you, and I don't want to spend tonight worrying whether or not you're going to make it back home."

He looked at her for a moment like she was speaking a language he didn't understand, but in the end he relented and turned back to Alaric, saying, "Okay, fine, though you're not really my type."

Alaric gave a raised eyebrow and a ghost of a smile and unbuttoned his shirt about halfway.

"Sorry, this is my best offer. Take it or leave it." Their eyes met in a moment of silent apology and forgiveness for the harsh words they'd just exchanged. Elena marvelled for a minute that, despite all the odds, the vampire hunter and the vampire had somehow become friends.

Damon started to lean towards Alaric, then paused, asking, "Okay, so what's your poison? Painful or awkwardly pleasurable?"

Alaric chuckled and appeared to consider his options. Elena, confused, turned to Caroline and whispered, "What does he mean by that?"

Caroline looked at her, perplexed. "I figured you would know, what with being Stefan's girlfriend and all." she replied. "Vampires have the power to take away the pain from their victims. It makes the feeding very sensual, incredibly intimate and enjoyable for both people. The problem is, you can't really do it in a non sexy way, so for two heterosexual dudes like them..." she inclined her head towards Damon and Alaric and trailed off. Elena blushed at the implications of her statement.

"Well," Alaric said, "honestly I've had about as much pain lately as I care to deal with. I'm going to have to go with the awkward option."

Damon smiled wickedly at him, leaning in and whispering, "I always knew you were a filthy pervert."

"Fuck you, Damon."

"Sorry. Like I said, not my type." With that he reached out and took Alaric in his arms, bending his head down to the sinewy, tanned skin of his neck and proceeded to feed.

Alaric's head rolled back and Damon caught it with one hand, using his other arm to hold him close and support the weight of Alaric's body. Though she knew exactly what was happening, Elena couldn't help but feel like she was some sort of peeping tom, an outsider staring at a tender moment between these two men that she had no business witnessing. That feeling only intensified when Alaric let out a soft, involuntary moan and shivered in Damon's arms, causing Elena's pulse to start racing. A glance over at Caroline told her the blonde was appreciating the view as much as she was; her own fangs were extended and her eyes darkened by the sight of the two men embracing.

After what seemed like a small eternity Damon withdrew, skin flushed and lips swollen. He smiled, sated, and held Alaric steady, giving the other man a chance to come back to himself from the euphoria in which he was clearly still reeling. When Alaric finally did open his eyes, they were heavy lidded and dark. He stretched like a cat and sat back down on the sofa.

"I thought you said I wasn't your type?" He said, clapping Damon playfully on the shoulder.

"You're not," Damon said frankly with a pointed look at Elena. "If you were a hot girl or something it would have been much, much more intense." She hated him for smiling when her cheeks flushed red.

"Damn," Alaric said, "That was..." he seemed at a loss for words.

"I know," Damon replied. "Me too... No homo." Then he winked at Elena and stood to pour two glasses of scotch, one of which Alaric accepted gratefully.

Caroline cleared her throat abruptly and said, "Um, okay. I confess I need a minute to recover from that. I'm going downstairs to steal a bag of blood before I bite someone. I hope that's okay." Damon laughed in response and she retreated quickly. Then he turned his gorgeous blue gaze on Elena, a knowing and self-satisfied smile on his face.

"What about you?" he asked, "Do you need a minute?"

She didn't even try to deny how much the moment had affected her. He'd just know she was lying anyway. She just shook her head in awe and said, "I had no idea it could be like that."

Damon's cocky smirk faded into a wistful smile and he sighed regretfully. "It's a shame, but I'm not surprised. Stefan spends his whole life hating what he is and wanting to be human again, when he isn't out of his mind with bloodlust, that is. He doesn't like to even acknowledge that there _can_ be anything good about being a vampire. The way I see it, though, that's a pretty terrible way to wait out eternity. You have to live, not just exist, right?" He turned to Alaric, who raised his glass in agreement, then went on to say, "I guess since Stefan has been sticking to his diet of guilt and bunny-blood he _couldn't_ share this with you, so he wouldn't bother telling you about how amazingly intimate it can be with the right person."

Elena nodded quietly, trying to digest all he was saying. Damon's words hit her hard; she'd never thought of Stefan as the immoderate brother before. He always tried his hardest to be _good_ and appear _human,_ and it had never once occurred to her that by doing so he was actually denying his own nature. The idea didn't sit well with her, particularly knowing Stefan had forced Damon to feed the first time against his will and turn rather than dying. How can you condemn your brother to what you believe is hell, and then judge him for making the best of it? She didn't care to further explore this line of questioning, though, so she turned to Damon instead and asked, "Are you feeling better?"

Damon considered the question before replying, "I am, actually. I might actually be back to normal in the next day or so. Thanks, Ric."

"Think nothing of it," Alaric replied, sounding tired but peaceful. "Now, before we lose the entire afternoon, who wants to go with me to check out my poor, abused apartment for clues?"

"We should do that," Elena was quick to agree, "And we should also get Caroline to ask her mom to keep an ear out for any weird police reports from nearby counties. She'll know what to listen for, after all, and we can just tell her it's Klaus we're worried about and leave Stefan's name out of it. And then-"

"And then," Damon interrupted blithely, "you're going to go home, do your homework, eat dinner, and get a full eight hours of sleep before you go to school in the morning."

"School? What?" She was honestly confused. Who was he kidding? "I'm not going to school tomorrow, Damon, I have to-"

"You have to what? Sit and twiddle your thumbs and pace in circles, going slowly insane from the uncertainty of waiting for news about Stefan while your high school diploma slowly slips away? No go, Princess. You keep saying you want to live life like a normal teenager, and this is what it's all about. You have lots of catching up to do since missing those days because of Jenna's funeral."

She glared at him. "You have no business telling me how to live my life, Damon. Do you think I give a shit about school right now?"

Alaric sprang to his feet and stepped between them as she started to get up in his face.

"I'm absolutely sure you _don't_ give a shit about school right now. Not one bit. But Damon's right, hon. You need to graduate, and I know because of faculty meetings that you're dangerously close to having to repeat this whole year. No one wants that, least of all you, so you might as well work on school while we're sitting around waiting for news, like Damon said. It'll be a welcome distraction, I promise you. Besides, the more normal we can all act, and the more it seems like we're pulling ourselves together and functioning like a family, the more likely it's going to be for me to actually get custody of your brother so his entire life doesn't get completely fucked."

Of course he had to go and pull the Jeremy card on her. She heaved a sigh, and Alaric continued, seeing she was close to conceding.

"This is what Jenna would have wanted. It's what your parents would have wanted. It's what Stefan would want."

She snapped her eyes up to meet his, saying, "Stefan isn't dead," in an unnecessarily defensive tone.

"Right," Damon agreed, coming to stand beside Alaric. "He's not, which means that he, unlike the others, has the power to kick your ass later if you drop out of school now."

She wanted to slap him in the face. Her hands were clenched by her sides. Damon must have realized how on edge she was, because he walked forward and put a hand on each of her tense shoulders, softening his voice as he said, "Go home tonight. Rest. Go to school and promise you'll pretend to be normal for the next six weeks until graduation, and I swear to you that if I hear anything at all about Stefan you'll be the first to know. We will find him, and we will bring him home, okay?"

Elena capitulated silently, nodding her agreement. She hated it, but she knew they were right. The real world wasn't going to wait for her personal life, it certainly never had before. Damon kissed her on the forehead as she nodded, acknowledging that he knew it was driving her mad her to agree to their demands. Then the three of them left the room to get Caroline and go scour Alaric's apartment as they began their search.

If Alaric or Caroline noticed that Damon kept his hand securely on the small of Elena's back as they walked, if they saw how she leaned against him in the backseat of Alaric's car, lost in thought, they didn't mention it. If they caught the way he held her when they counted the empty blood bags all over Alaric's floor, if they saw the small squeeze he gave her hand as they parted ways at the end of the day, they said nothing. Elena knew it was wrong, she knew she was walking a dangerous emotional tightrope that would absolutely infuriate Stefan, but she couldn't help but take the small measures of comfort Damon was silently offering her. Ever since yesterday he'd seemed like the only solid thing in the world to her, and she was in dire need of someone to lean on.

"We'll find Stefan," she told the darkness as she laid down to sleep at the end of the day, "and he'll understand. Then everything will go back to normal, and we'll all be okay." Whatever "normal" was. Whatever "okay" meant.

She wasn't really even sure who she was trying to convince.


	5. Staying Afloat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you've read the LJ Smith books (which I grew up with before the show because I am An Old Person) you might get an extra chuckle in this chapter or farther along the way... I find the differences between the books and the show to be amusing and enjoy referring to them to them from time to time.

It was far easier than she expected to fall back into a semi-normal high school student routine. Her teachers were beyond understanding about her absences (even if they did all look at her with that sad, pitying gaze that she remembered hating back when her parents died), and all of them had make-up tests and extra credit assignments prepared to help her catch up. Before long she found herself immersed in a sea of French, Physics and World Literature and even started to care about her grades again. She even ate food and went to bed when people expected her to. In short, she was trying to do her part to keep up her end of the deal she'd made with Damon and act as normal as possible. She was almost succeeding.

She knew that there were some who would never understand why she spent every lunch period and study hall studying or just staring out the window in Mr. Saltzman's classroom rather than socializing with any of the other students, some that talked behind her back and even went so far as to start a rumor that she and Alaric were sleeping together (as if he was the type of teacher who would _ever_ consider dating a student), but she couldn't bring herself to feel worked up over it. In six...five... now four more weeks she would be free of Mystic Falls High School forever.

For now she sat in seventh period English class, farther from Bonnie than she wanted to be because the teacher seated them alphabetically, absentmindedly leafing through her planner and staring at Stefan's empty desk on the other side of the room. Three weeks. It had been three weeks since Stefan had left with Klaus and there had been no word from him since. Katherine hadn't contacted them again, either, and Alaric's apartment, though they had searched everything including his desktop hard drive and browser history from top to bottom, had provided no useful clues as to Klaus' plans. Elena couldn't feel hope, and her friends wouldn't let her feel despair, so what she ended up feeling most often was numb. She didn't mind; numb was safe. Numb was free of pain, and numb let her sleep at night, mostly.

She knew her friends were concerned about her, so she kept it together the best she could, but they all had too much on their own plates to worry extensively about her emotional condition. Caroline was trying her hardest to cobble together a functioning relationship with her mom, not just for the first time since her transition but for the first time in her life. When she wasn't dealing with that, she was dealing with Tyler and the challenges of being a brand new werewolf as well as, Elena suspected (but didn't ask), some kind of star-crossed romance between members of two species who had been mutual enemies for millennia. Bonnie and Jeremy were absorbed in dealing with Jeremy's issues, which, Elena had learned, involved seeing visions or ghosts of dead women from his past. Alaric, bless his heart, had been spending the last three weeks putting his things in storage, getting out of his lease, moving into the Gilbert home and starting to pay Jenna's share of their bills (thank God her parents' life insurance policy had been enough to cover the rest of the mortgage) while going through the harrowing process of trying to adopt a sixteen-year-old boy to whom he was not blood related as well as teaching five periods a day of American history. Everyone was swamped. The only one who never seemed too busy, distracted, or preoccupied for her was Damon.

Though he'd spent almost every day of the past three weeks day-tripping to every vampire hang-out within three states in search of news about Stefan, Klaus, or any suspiciously large mass kills, he always made sure to check in with her every single night, on the phone if not in person. It was the one thing she looked forward to each day. Now, she wasn't going all soft over him or anything. She knew Damon was no knight in shining armor. He was still a giant pain in the ass, he still made decisions that affected her life without asking first, he still changed moods every thirty seconds and disrespected her personal space and privacy. More often than not their conversations ended in arguments, sometimes even outright yelling about something as petty as his nagging her about her English homework. Last night he'd said something off-color about Jenna and she'd gotten worked up enough to try to slap him in the face.

That was when she realized it. The moment when his hand had flown up to block hers with his lightening fast reflexes she saw the quiet glint of victory in his eyes. He was doing in on purpose. Damon didn't care if she was angry, didn't care if she hated his guts. He just wanted her to feel _something_ , because he knew better than anyone how easy it was to hide in an emotionless sanctuary, how hard it was to crawl out once you've cocooned yourself there, and how horrifyingly isolated and solitary a lifestyle without feelings can be. This was Damon's gift to her, to keep her in the game and make her feel anything but numb.

 _Damon makes you feel a lot of things,_ her brain teased her, _but numb is definitely not one of them._

No, the aching and the longing she'd felt as he held her fragile wrist in his supernaturally strong hand and stared back at the angry challenge in her eyes had definitely not been numbness. It had been a pool of molten desire that roiled low in her belly and seeped out into every part of her until even her fingers and the roots of her hair throbbed with it. Three weeks of silently stoking the unspoken yet undeniable heat between them was starting to drive her insane. It had taken every shred of her self control to keep herself from leaning forward in that moment and kissing him hard on his arrogant mouth with her hands tangled in his impossibly soft hair, just to wipe that smirk off his face and give him something to think about other than picking fights with her. She could never do that, though, no matter how badly she wanted it, because she was absolutely certain that her and Damon's chances of stopping at "just a kiss" had flown weeks ago, and though every single cell in her body was aching for him to touch her, take her, claim her... bite her... the voice of reason in the back of her head kept her miserably in check.

 _This is wrong, what you feel for him_ , the voice insisted. _You're with his brother. His BROTHER. His brother who is missing and in danger because he loves both of you._

She was pretty sure she wanted it _more_ because it was wrong. But she wouldn't, couldn't be the one to ruin everything with Stefan. And so, paralyzed with heart-stopping desire and emotional turmoil she'd just stood, staring into his amazing blue eyes, and waited, quivering, until he took pity on her and stepped away.

Damon had to know. Supernatural senses aside, he wasn't born yesterday. Elena marveled that while she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was aware if he said even one word she would melt into his arms with complete abandon, he hadn't. He hadn't taken advantage of her emotional state, he hadn't pushed his own agenda despite the fact that he must know she wanted him so badly sometimes she could scream, or cry. Instead he gave her space, he stepped away, and then he called her the next day to check in again, as though nothing was odd between them and the slate was wiped clean. He clearly wanted her to be okay more than he wanted her to be his. Amazing.

Elena shifted in her seat and tried to concentrate and take notes on the lecture, but her mind kept wandering back to Damon, in all his many forms. How could she reconcile this new, caring, supportive Damon with all the contrasting and contradictory incarnations she'd known before? There was typical, everyday Damon, the asshole, using his wit like a weapon to keep them at a distance while he hoped no one noticed he was a real person inside. There was the flirtatious, sarcastic, infuriatingly coy Damon he preferred to be in her presence. More disturbingly, she remembered another, awful Damon, drunk and blind with rage, so angry at her and at the world he'd broken Jeremy's neck just to make someone feel as much hurt as he did. How was that Damon even the same person as the one she'd talked to yesterday? She'd never been so scared of anything as she'd been scared of him that night.

_"He wants to be a vampire. You wanna shut out the pain? It's the easiest thing in the world. The part of you that cares just goes away. All you have to do is flip the switch and snap!"_

In that moment Elena had written Damon off entirely, deciding he was too damaged for her to even try to be his friend. But that hadn't stopped her from using him when she'd needed him. And later, when he'd confessed his mistake to her, when he'd admitted he never saw the ring on Jeremy's hand... she'd taken that shred of humanity he'd cobbled together for her and thrown it in his face.

 _"Thank you for being honest with me. And the answer to your question about our friendship? Is yes. You have lost me forever."_ God, she'd been so angry. She'd been so mad at him for Jeremy that the pain in his eyes actually pleased her.

 _"But you knew that already, didn't you? When you used me today."_ He hadn't sounded surprised, which saddened her against her will. How many other people used this man? How many people had contributed to his brokenness? Was she just making it worse? Nevermind that, it wasn't her problem.

 _ **"** You had information about Katherine that I needed." _She wouldn't lie to him, at least. He deserved that much.

_"I thought friends didn't manipulate friends? You and Katherine have a lot more in common than just your looks."_

He'd had no idea how right he was. After all, if she was so good and so different than Katherine, the way everyone seemed to believe she was, how could she continue to screw with Damon's head and use him the way she did, knowing how pure and sincere his love for her really was?

 _That's what you're doing, you know,_ she told herself firmly, and hated herself for it. _You're using him. You're letting him shower you with attention and fuss over you, you're flirting with him and doing strip teases for him and encouraging this obscenely intense sexual chemistry you have with him, you're depending on him for a lifeline to her sanity and for affirmation and...hope...and it's just_ wrong. _It's wrong because you know how he feels about you, and you can't possibly give_ him _what_ he _needs in return for all of this amazing affection and support that isn't yours to take, because you belong to his brother. You are Stefan's, and when Stefan finally comes home to you, this_ whatever-it-is _you have going on with Damon is going to end, and he's going to realize it's all been a lie._

The thought of shattering Damon's fragile and broken heart into even smaller pieces made her want to vomit, because when she considered it she couldn't think about asshole Damon, or playboy Damon, or drunken psychopath Damon, or even the lustful Damon watching her ill-advised strip-tease with blatant, unconcealed longing. The only Damon she saw in her mind was the one she'd met three weeks before as she'd lain holding him through his fever, and then crying in his arms after his unexpected salvation.

 _You should stop this,_ she told herself. _You should tell him to go away, that you need some time to get yourself together and that you can't see him for a while. It's for the best, for both of you, really._

At the thought her chest constricted painfully enough to make her gasp aloud.

 _Right,_ she told her mind, _I'll tell him to fuck off, right after I learn how to give up breathing._

The shrill ringing of the class bell snapped her out of her reverie and Elena grabbed her backpack, standing and meeting Bonnie in the hall.

"Hey, girl. We're all going to The Grill to have a snack and play some pool, since it's Friday and we have nothing else going on. Wanna join?"

Elena smiled through her numbness, trying to appear appreciative of Bonnie's concern.

"Thanks, really, but I think I'm going to go home. I'm not really feeling up to socializing this afternoon."

"Understood," Bonnie said mildly, but as they walked out of the school building her eyes caught sight of something in the parking lot and she continued speaking with a smile, "but I think you might not have a choice about this one after all. I'm afraid 'Ric may have spilled the beans about our plans. It looks like someone is here to enforce your minimum required fun quota for the week."

Elena looked across the parking lot in the direction of Bonnie's gaze, and sure enough, Damon Salvatore was there, leaning against a black Z4 convertible and hanging out as though there was nothing else he'd rather be doing with his day than standing in an ocean of human teenagers, waiting for her. He caught Elena's eye, smiled mischievously and beckoned her to him with one finger. Elena groaned in annoyance. Bonnie laughed.

"Oh shut up!" she exclaimed. "Since when do you and Damon agree on anything ever?"

Bonnie shrugged. "Since he stopped being an insufferable asshole and started being the only thing that makes you happy in your life, I suppose. See you in ten minutes, hon. I gotta go find Jeremy."

 _The only thing that makes me happy?_ Elena wondered as she walked reluctantly towards Damon's car, scowling. _I don't feel happy. I feel like I want to leave and be by myself where I don't have to pretend to care about anything, and this jerk is getting in my way._

She greeted him with a half-hug and told him they might as well get this over with, since she obviously wasn't going to be allowed to go home like she wanted. He took her bag and ceremoniously opened her door for her with a half bow and a sweep of his arm, then immediately ruined the chivalrous gesture by ruffling her hair as she sat down. She fussed and swatted his hand away, laughing through her protests, and he grinned at her as he climbed in and started the engine. He didn't press her for meaningless conversation; the two of them never talked unless they needed to, so she sat in comfortable silence, just enjoying being with someone who understood, who never pitied her. It wasn't until they were halfway to The Grill that she suddenly realized she'd actually just laughed.


	6. Chasing Windmills

Though the day outside was overcast Damon opted to drive with the top down. Elena loved the feeling of the wind in her hair, he knew, and he approved of the color it put in her cheeks. Moreover, the open roof let him drive without becoming completely immersed in the scent of her, an intoxicating smell of youth, humanity, womanhood, and lavender shampoo that made him dizzy with desire which was slowly driving him out of his mind.

The problem was not that he couldn't have her. If there was one thing in the past century and a half to which he'd grown pathetically accustomed it was to _not_ getting what he most desperately wanted. The problem was that he couldn't have her even though she wanted him too. He knew she wanted him. He was certain of it. He'd been seducing women too long not to see the signs: the flush in her cheeks when he walked towards her, the shortness of breath she sometimes got when he was there and they were sharing a particularly intense moment of conversation or silence, and, if he was close enough, the smell of her arousal.

There were days when it was so overwhelming it was nearly impossible for him to restrain himself from taking what he knew her body wanted to give him, when all he wanted in the world was to grab her by her hair, kiss her until neither one of them could breathe, tear off her clothes and just take... take... take... her body, her blood, her everything. But he couldn't do it. Every time he thought he was going to snap, every time he was so close he could feel the heat of her living breath ghosting over his lips and hear the pounding of her heart in her chest as she anticipated his assault, his mind was flooded with snapshots from the past he would do anything to forget.

_She'd looked so beautiful that night. He could still remember the way her hair had fallen around her face as she'd asked him, "Damon, we're close enough now. I really wanna know how you're doing."_

_Close enough for you to crush me, you mean. What the fuck is wrong with me, even thinking for a second it could have been you? What the fuck is wrong with me for even putting myself out there just to give Katherine one more good slash at me while my defenses were down? And why the hell am I even here right now having this conversation? He made himself sick._

_"I kissed you," he said, "Thought you kissed me back. Doppelgänger hijinx ensued. How do you think I'm doing?" I feel violated, and it's all my own goddamned fault._ _For one moment I believed. For one moment I felt like there might be something more for me in this existence than annoying the crap out of my asshole brother who put me here. You'd think I would have learned better by now._

_"I think that you're hurt."_

_Well, give the girl a fucking medal, he thought. Your powers of observation are bordering on genius level, princess. Now let's go for extra credit and guess who I_ don't _want to be talking to about this right now, shall we?_

_"Hmm, no, I don't get hurt, Elena."_

_"No, you don't admit that you get hurt. You get angry and cover it up and then you do something stupid."_

_God, he hated it when she told the truth at him. Why was she the only one who could see through him, and why did she belong to Stefan? She doesn't give a shit about you, so why does she even care if you're hurt?_ _"You're scared," he hazarded a guess. "You think Katherine's going to send me off the deep end, don't you? I don't need her for that. You know what? Why is it such a surprise that I would kiss you?"_

_You've got my number, Elena. You see straight through me. Surely you know why..._

_"That's not a surprise. I'm surprised you thought I'd kiss you back."_

_So was I, he thought. Surprised, elated, and hopelessly, helplessly falling in love with you, you cruel child. Don't worry, though, it's not a mistake I intend to repeat ever again._

And he hadn't. He could not bring himself to kiss her. God, he'd wanted to, been desperate to for weeks now and his body was in such a hell of pent-up desire over it that even being in a car with her had him shifting uncomfortably in his tight-fitting jeans, hoping she didn't notice his arousal. But he always remembered that day, and so he always held back. For all his physical strength it seemed he was absolutely powerless when it came to her. From Elena he could take nothing. She'd made that perfectly clear on several occasions, and he was going to do his damndest to maintain what dignity he had left and not press the issue, taking what comfort he could from the fact that he knew she finally considered him her friend, and that at least her body desperately wanted him, in spite of her mind.

They walked into The Grill and Elena immediately located the table in the back where Tyler and Caroline were waiting for her. She went to sit with them while Damon went to the bar for a drink. The bartender, a curvaceous blonde who could have been stunningly beautiful if she wasn't trying so hard, looked him over appreciatively before sauntering up to take his order.

"MacCallan 12, double, neat," he said, glancing over to see that Elena thankfully appeared to be participating actively in the conversation her friends were having, rather than sitting lost in thought while they talked. This was an improvement over last week. As she poured his scotch the bartender followed his gaze.

"Babysitting duty?" she asked, flashing him a pouty smile that he was certain usually worked wonders to keep her wallet full of tips and her cell phone full of men's numbers. It wasn't working on him. Elena was young, yes. But she had more inner strength and maturity than this woman could ever aspire to, and he didn't appreciate the insinuation behind her question. She was saved from having to sit through his response, though, because as he was opening his mouth to tell her exactly what he thought about her, Alaric walked through the door and caught his eye, followed by Bonnie and Jeremy who went to join their friends at the table.

"Mind if I join you in the creepy old people section?" Ric joked as he came to sit on the stool next to Damon's.

"Be my guest," Damon replied, "though I can't really promise good company for you right now."

"You look a little worse for wear, my friend," Alaric observed after ordering his own whiskey from the bartender. "Maybe you should take a few days down time before you start driving again."

"Every day I don't look is another day I lose," Damon said flatly, "but I'll be in town for a few days at least. I need to research a few more possible leads or else I'm just driving blind. They're not good leads or anything... but they're all that's keeping her going." He jerked his head in Elena's direction and knocked back a healthy swig of his drink.

Truth be told he was happy to be staying home for a little while. Being in a car with nothing to keep him company but his thoughts was starting to drive him slowly out of his mind.

He was worried about Stefan, out in who-knows-where doing God-knows-what, enslaved to the boogey-man. He was pissed at Stefan for sacrificing his jealously guarded humanity for Damon's afflicted, tempestuous life and now leaving him in this position, trying uncomfortably to fill his brother's knight-in-shining-armor shoes and calling the shots on a rescue mission he didn't even think was fucking possible. He was pissed at himself for not doing a better job, for not believing. He was worried about Elena, about what would happen to her if he couldn't find Stefan, about what might happen to her if he _could._

Elena knew Stefan might not want to be found, but Damon was pretty sure she'd never worked out exactly how far gone he might be if... when they finally managed to track him down. Stefan in the throes of blood lust was little better than a rabid dog, and for her to see that, for her to have to face the monster Stefan kept buried so deep inside, Damon wondered if she would be able to handle it without snapping, as tenuous as her emotional state was these days.

 _You always just could stop looking, if you're so worried,_ his mind reminded him viciously. _If he's never found, she never has to face him like this, never has to reconcile the fact that she's in love with a monster with a trail of murdered babies and desecrated corpses in his past. And then you wouldn't have to deal with weaning him back off the human-juice and putting the sanctimonious stick back up his ass. Not to mention the fact that you'd never again have to look at them together, to watch her heal him while she gives him with open arms the only thing you want on this miserable, broken Earth. Just slow down... just stop looking. It would be so easy._

But even as he formed that despicable thought he knew it was just as unthinkable as any of his other, numerous impossible dreams. Even if he could switch off his emotions and leave his brother to the big bad wolf, which he wasn't sure he could stomach, in the depths of his soul he would know he hadn't tried, and that knowledge alone would be enough to ensure he could never look Elena in the eye again. He'd be a mess of guilt and shame, and if he ever got stupid enough to confess his sins, there would be no absolution for him this time, he was certain. Stefan's absence would then come between them more decisively than his presence ever had, and he would lose Elena as surely as if he murdered her.

He looked over at her, sitting at that table in this place he'd dragged her to, making the best of every miserable day as it came, because she was doing her best to hold up her end of the deal they'd made. His heart ached as he watched her talking, forcing herself to keep going in the hope that there was actually a light at the end of this tunnel. A light that he'd promised to bring her.

_You're eighteen years old, and you're braver, more compassionate, stronger than I have ever been in all the years I've been breathing. It's incredible. It's why Stefan loves you. It's why I love you. You make me remember what it is to be human. That gift is invaluable, and so I will find him and I will bring him to you, because that is the only thing you've asked of me in return._

After that? Fuck. After that, once Elena was wrapped securely in Stefan's arms and all the white ponies had galloped off into the sunset and everyone lived happily ever fucking after, Damon was out of here. He couldn't stand on the sidelines after all of this to watch the tender glow of the camaraderie he and Elena were building in these tense weeks suffocate under the flames of her perfect love affair with Stefan. Monte Carlo was lovely this time of year, after all, and it had been a while since Damon had spent the trust-fund of a handsome heiress on champagne and blackjack. A few thousand miles of space, a few dozen years of time. That would probably be enough.


	7. White Knights and Witchcraft

Elena sat at the table feeling tired, but actually happy to be there. She wasn't going to tell Damon that, or anything, but she was almost glad he'd dragged her out against her will. Even if she wasn't participating in conversations as readily as she normally would, listening to her friends interact and laugh, hearing Tyler and Jeremy pick on each other while Caroline and Bonnie cajoled them to stop made her feel a little bit more like herself, a little bit more alive. At that precise moment she was realizing that she should be spending more time paying attention in seventh period English class, and less time daydreaming about the Salvatore brothers, because Bonnie and Caroline were discussing their current assignment about _Tristan and Isolde_ and Elena had almost no idea what they were talking about.

"No," Caroline was complaining, "I just think it's dumb. It's a waste of time to compare it to the King Arthur stuff because it's the same story. I'm totally going to have to leave my Decorations Committee meeting early tonight to write a stupid essay about two stupid stories that have the same plot. It's pointlessness and she's a bitch for assigning it."

"Committee?" Elena asked, bewildered, "For what?"

Caroline blinked at her for a few minutes before dramatically declaring "Um... _PROM_! Prom is next week, Elena. How could you possibly forget?"

Oh... Prom. Elena _had_ forgotten, or at least intentionally put it out of her mind. With her mindset as stressed out as she'd been lately she didn't even want to _think_ about school social functions, much less dress shopping. She had no inclination whatsoever to go, especially with her boyfriend missing, so she'd stopped paying attention to the signs and announcements all over the school building. Prom was for happy people, for children about to be adults, for people whose biggest worry was whether they'd get caught drinking by their parents at the end of the night. She had no place at prom, and she definitely didn't want to discuss it, so she made an effort to steer the conversation in _any_ other direction.

"So, why is it that you say Lancelot and Tristan are basically the same?" She'd been absent for almost every lecture on medieval literature and myths, so she was even actually sort of interested interested in Caroline's response.

"Well," the blonde responded with a hair toss, "It's just true. Lancelot and Tristan are like, identical characters. We talked about it earlier this quarter when we went over the ideas of Courtly Love and the standard arche- arch..." she stumbled.

"Archetypes,' Bonnie supplied.

"That," Caroline agreed. "There's the handsome young knight, in service to his king, who falls in love with the king's wife... all super romantic and all, but totally predictable. It's more formulaic than a Nora Roberts novel. I don't need to write an essay about that crap, I have banners to paint and garlands to hang!"

"I don't know," Bonnie chimed in, "there are some pretty big differences if you asked me. Lancelot and Guinevere didn't have any magical potions or ill-fated love at first sight nonsense. They actually knew each other. And Lancelot was one of Arthur's closest friends. There are tons of differences in the details. I love both stories, they're so tragic and beautiful... and they're not so formulaic if you look under the surface. It's so, so romantic... we're all so obsessed with instant gratification and sex in our culture it's like we don't understand the beauty of something like Courtly Love..."

Elena made a face. "I don't see what's so beautiful about wasting your life pining after a married woman and maybe convincing her to cheat on her husband. I mean, I've barely even read the assignment at this point, so I don't really have an educated opinion, but as far as relationships go, wouldn't it just be healthier to get over the girl and find someone who could love you back freely?"

The table fell silent as Elena finished speaking. Bonnie raised her eyebrows and said nothing. Caroline and Tyler exchanged a look. Jeremy snickered.

"What?" Elena demanded, glaring at her brother. "What's so funny?"

"Nothing!" he exclaimed, defensive. "It's just kind of amusing that you of all people would have a problem with the idea of Courtly Love, since you're, like, the only girl alive today actually _living_ in one."

She looked at him in horror. When she spoke it was in a tense whisper, praying Damon wasn't listening to her speak.

"You've got to be kidding me. You're trying to compare Lancelot and Tristan to _Damon Salvatore?_ You're all out of your minds."

No one said anything.

"Good grief. I hate you all," she muttered. "I'm going to the bathroom. When I get back it would be great if we could talk about _absolutely anything_ besides this _._ "

With that, she stood and left the table, going to splash some water on her face and try to unruffle her feathers a bit.

 _Unlikely as it seems, Damon really is sort of like your white knight, isn't he?_ she thought, and it made her chest feel tight. _He's always there for you, would do anything for you, and he's got you constantly on the verge of ruining yourself with temptation. Just try to remember how it ended for Guinevere and Isolde. Keep that in mind, next time he looks so good you want to forget the rest of the world exists._

Leaving the bathroom she was so lost in thought she almost didn't hear the familiar voice behind her calling out, "Hey, Elena! Hold up a minute!"

As she slowly turned, she found herself face to face with Matt Donovan, dressed for work, his handsome face slightly red from the heat of the kitchen, a yellow and white striped bar towel slung over his shoulder.

"Hey, Matt," she replied, not really sure what he could want from her. She and Matt hadn't really talked much since Jenna's funeral, since Elena had been so withdrawn, and when she was out and about she was often with Caroline, who didn't really want to be around Matt so much since their break-up over her vampirism. Besides that, he'd made it pretty clear that he didn't want anything to do with the supernatural aspects of the world, and Elena's life these days seemed to involve little else. She'd never felt ill-at-ease around Matt before, they'd known each other so long that the idea of _not_ being friends was almost unthinkable, but at that moment she had absolutely nothing to say to him, and it made her feel uncomfortable. She didn't like it.

"How ya been?" he asked feebly. She shrugged in response, looking around the room for something, _anything_ to distract her from this needlessly awkward conversation. That was when she noticed Alaric and Damon shamelessly staring from the bar with great interest. Wonderful.

"Well," she replied, her tone slightly more caustic than intended, "you know how it is... Dead family, missing boyfriend, vampires, witches, werewolves... the usual. Nothing you'd be interested in."

Matt looked a little embarrassed and maybe even a little hurt at her words, but he kept talking.

"Um... I was just going to ask you about prom, that's all."

"Oh," Elena replied, still desperately wanting to not talk about it but seeing no tactful escape route, "um... what about it?"

"Well, since I figured you, uh, don't have a date right now, and I don't either, I was going to ask if you wanted to go together, for old time's sake. You shouldn't have to go alone, you know, and we already have a stack of dance photos together. I figured we could complete the set."

Aw, that was kind of sweet. It was wonderful to know Matt still cared about her, even if her life was filled with everything in the world he was trying to avoid. Elena had to smile at him, as irritated as she was. "I don't know, Matt," she said wearily, "honestly, I wasn't planning on going. With Stefan missing and everything with Jenna and... everything... I'm not really feeling up to partying these days. Besides, there's that whole 'Caroline' thing to worry about. I know you had your reasons, and I respect them, but you really tore her up when you broke it off with her. I know she'd never expect me to stop being friends with you, but I don't know if she'd appreciate me bringing you as a date to the dance."

"No, it wouldn't be like a date, Elena," Matt pressed, "not a real one. I know you're all about Stefan, and honestly I'm pretty messed up in the head about Caroline anyway. Neither one of us needs a real date. But you've been, like, the queen of this school for four years. It would be a shame for you to miss this last big celebration, you know? Maybe even more of a shame, considering what a rough year you've had. Prom and graduation are a once-in-a-lifetime experience. We won't get another chance."

Elena's pocket buzzed and she hurriedly reached for her cell-phone, praying for escape. What she got was the opposite, in the form of a text message from Damon Salvatore.

 _Alaric here informs me that attending prom is a very NORMAL thing for 18 year old girls to do.  
_ _Most of them don't argue when varsity football players want to take them as their dates._  
We've talked about being normal, doing normal things. We have a deal.  
The answer is, "yes."

Elena looked up in anger at Damon over by the bar, shocked and dismayed. She should have known he wouldn't be okay with her skipping the dance, and of _course_ he was going to throw their agreement in her face about it. Damn him and his super-human hearing. She begged him with her eyes to let her off the hook, but he just smiled sweetly at her and re-sent the last line of his message.

_The answer is, "yes."_

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Elena did not appreciate being forced into doing stupid crap against her will. Who the hell did he think he was? Some noble white knight he was shaping up to be. Looking at Damon's smug smile across the bar made her want to pull out her hair, or maybe _his_ hair. She wanted to scream, to throw things, to hit him in the face. She wanted to run away and hide in her bed. Since she couldn't do any of that, though, she turned back to Matt with a tight-lipped smile, and said, "You know what, you're right. It would be a horrible shame to miss it. Thanks, Matt. Let's plan on it."

Matt, who had clearly been bracing himself for blunt rejection, blinked in surprise and said, "Awesome! Um, yeah. I'll pick you up from home that night, around eight or so. Thanks, Elena. We'll have fun, you'll see."

Elena very much doubted it, but didn't say so. Instead, she smiled again, hugged Matt and watched him disappear cheerfully back into the kitchen (he didn't deserve to take the brunt of her anger, after all; he was just being a sweet boy and concerned friend), then walked back to the table of her friends trying to suppress the cranky scowl that was threatening to take over her face.

Sitting back down she said, "Okay, please tell me someone has something to say that isn't going to make me feel uncomfortable or annoyed."

Bonnie spoke up, saying, "Actually, I do have something to share. I was waiting for Damon and Alaric to come join us, though, because they're going to want to hear this too."

"I'll go get them," Jeremy volunteered, and a few minutes later they were all assembled together around the table. Elena glared at Damon. He blew her a kiss. She glared harder and looked down at the table, feeling like a pouty child and playing with a fork as Bonnie spoke to them with cautious excitement.

"So I know I've been really involved in trying to help Jeremy sort out his ghost stuff these days, and I haven't been around nearly as much for you as I want, Elena, but I promise I haven't forgotten about Stefan or the mess he's in. One thing I've been really thinking about a lot is the fact that even if... even when we find Stefan, even when we convince him to come home and overcome his bloodlust, Klaus isn't going to want to let him go, and Klaus is sort of, well, un-killable."

Everyone at the table nodded, grim-faced at the mention of this particular worry they all shared. Bonnie went on.

"I've gone through my Grimoire cover-to-cover twice and I haven't found anything remotely helpful, so I started considering other resources. Last night I contacted Lucy and asked her for help."

"Lucy?" Damon said in his most scathingly skeptical tone, "You mean Lucy the bad witch who was working with Katherine and nearly got Elena killed with her doppelganger magic tricks? That Lucy?"

Bonnie looked at him with a withering glare.

"Don't be mad, Bonnie," Caroline said, "it's an honest question. How do we know we can trust her?"

Bonnie shrugged. "Lucy only did those things for Katherine to satisfy her blood-debt. I don't think she ever would have done anything like that of her own free will. And I didn't give her any of the specifics of the situation, really. I presented my question to her focusing on trying to deal with Klaus, get him out of our lives, I didn't talk much about rescuing Stefan. I think we can trust that she's going to want to get the grand-father of all bad guys out of everyone's way for good. She understands better than most how dangerous vampires can really be, when they're so unhinged, and even if she didn't have personal experience with them she would take a serious professional interest in doing away with the worst one ever. Anyway, to get to the point, Lucy knows about a spell that can give us the power to compel Klaus just as easily as he can compel a human."

Everyone exchanged excited and curious looks. Bonnie paused for a moment, then continued speaking.

"Here's the catch, though. It's a blood-magic spell between predator and prey, and so the compulsion itself has to be carried out by someone bitten by the vampire. In this case, that means Elena would have to do it. She's the only one here that Klaus has bitten."

Elena looked up sharply from her sulking and met Damon's eyes across the table. The teasing humor had faded from them and he was looking at Elena tight-lipped and deadly serious. She could guess pretty much exactly how he felt about her going up against Klaus in a magic battle to save Stefan. He also had to know there was no way in hell he could stop her. Elena turned back to Bonnie, saying, "Go on."

"Well," Bonnie continued, "since he's fed on you, there's apparently some kind of link you two share. It's something about shared life forces, since your blood is sustaining him right now. His life energy and yours are the same. Since he fed so much on you, the bond will be stronger, and it will last a while, probably a couple of months. So a coven of witches can use that connection, that dependency he has on your life energy, to conjure a charm to give you the same power of compulsion over him that he has over you. Then, for a time, you can tell him to do whatever you want him to, and he has to listen. You can force him to leave you alone forever. The concept of the spell is really simple, actually. Lucy told me she could gather the right number of practitioners to come down and help me cast it whenever I want. The only problem is that the clock is ticking. For this to work we have to find Stefan and Klaus before Elena's blood is out of his system for good."

Everyone exchanged glances again, looking worried, excited, hopeful. Alaric patted Bonnie on the shoulder, impressed with her work. Damon looked pained, and knocked back his glass of whiskey before speaking.

"So, we're supposed to send Elena up against the biggest monster in the history of the world wielding only a spell put together by a bunch of strangers and a witch who's already tried to kill her?"

Bonnie looked at him coldly.

"Yes, unfortunately," she said, challenge in her eyes, "unless you have a better idea."

Elena interrupted before the uneasy truce between Bonnie and Damon could be shattered.

"Do it," she said, swallowing her fear and feeling energized to actually be able to do something productive. "Call Lucy now. Make it happen."

* * *

Later she glanced up at him as he drove her back to the boarding house. She'd taken to sleeping there at least half the time even when Damon was out of town, to escape her own home and its memories, and to take what comfort she could from Stefan and Damon's presence which seemed to permeate every room. It was a silly thing, she knew, but he never objected and she appreciated his indulgence.

"Are you okay?" she asked him as they drove the winding Virginia roads.

"Not really," he replied curtly. She knew as much.

"Damon, you know I have to do this, right? You know I can't live with myself if I don't."

"I know," he replied with a frustrated sigh. "But I don't have to like it. I could try to stop you. I could lock you up, or find a way to compel you or hit you over the head and put you in the hospital. You'd hate me forever, and I could live with that if I knew you were safe. But I know you'd find a way to get out of it, you stubborn, impossible pain in the ass, and then you'd hate me and I'd still have to watch you throw yourself between Stefan and Klaus. It really, really sucks Elena. It would be great if just once I could actually protect you from the danger rather than placing you directly in its path."

She wished she could say anything to comfort him, but he was absolutely right. There was nothing he could do to prevent her from taking this risk, no matter how much pain it would cause him. Still, he sounded so lost, so forlorn, that her heart broke a little, and she reached over to rest her hand on top of his where it squeezing the gear shift so hard his knuckles were white. He tangled his fingers with hers, gripping her hand almost to the point of pain, and she made no move to stop him. She didn't want to, really. The intensity of it felt good, solid, right. The electric heat she felt when he touched her made her body ache, but she welcomed the tension. Tension was all they had, it was better than pain and worry, and right now she thought they both needed that small reminder that they weren't alone.


	8. Inspirations and Confrontations

He racked his brain as they drove. Given Bonnie's plan, he now had about six weeks to find his brother while Klaus was still full of Elena's blood, therefore still standing a chance of actually rescuing Stefan. It was an unsettlingly small time frame, but he'd worked with worse, and at least now they had some hope of being able to take action once they found them. Honestly, though he'd never tell Elena so, the urgency didn't really stress him out more than he was already, because realistically the longer Stefan stayed with a sadistic madman like Klaus, the bigger the chances his humanity would eventually be shredded beyond repair. In that case, bringing him off of his blood high and actually restoring him to his mental health would become functionally impossible. Considering the things Klaus was probably having him do, six weeks from now the Stefan they all knew would most likely be a goner.

He glanced over at Elena, relished the feel of her hand in his, which she hadn't taken back since his frustrated outburst a few minutes before. It seemed to him that sometimes Elena was better at dealing with his feelings than he himself was.

 _It's such a tiny hand,_ he thought to himself, _I could crush the bones into powder in a split second, and yet it's making me feel comforted, reassured. Strange things, emotions. I suppose this is what people see in each other. This must be what you miss out on when you're alone._

Camaraderie, solidarity, friendship. Elena showed him all of these things, probably never realizing he'd never experienced such a thing with anyone at all since his death.

 _It's been over a hundred and fifty years,_ he thought to himself, _a hundred and fifty years spent doing nothing but punishing Stefan for Katherine's imprisonment in a tomb she wasn't even in. A hundred and fifty years of hating my brother, living only to pester him and make him miserable, a hundred and fifty years of loving (to the point of desperation) a woman who never gave a damn, of shoving every other living or undead being as far away as I could, of shutting off my emotions and becoming the expert cold, evil predator, the perfect tormentor, a revenge machine._

 _Well,_ he thought, _if I was going to be obsessive and single minded at least I became a master of my craft._

It was true, too. Stefan hadn't known a moment's peace since they'd died. At times it had been almost fun, torturing his brother and waiting for that inevitable look of defeat to cross his sad, puppy-dog face- like that time with Lexie in Georgia back in the forties. They'd been involved in some vampire-run, hippie, dogooder, post-war effort dealing with shell shocked veterans... real vampires for a cause, those two. Damon had come in, fangs bared and whispering in German, and that was when he'd learned it was _actually_ possible to scare a human being to death. Their hearts pop, just like a bunny. You can even hear it if you know what to listen for.

He chuckled softly to himself. Oh, Stefan's face...

"What's so funny?" Elena asked in a tired voice.

Damon sobered at once.

"Trust me," he told her, "I'm absolutely certain you wouldn't agree."

As she shrugged and looked out the window Damon released her hand. He was pathetically pleased to notice that rather than taking it back, she left it resting on the center console.

Whatever had become of that vampire fellow, Charles, who had been running that trauma center? Stefan had saved his life, once, when a patient had almost burned down the building with the good doctor inside. That incident may or may not have been a direct result of Damon's little visit... Ha. Charles had stayed in the south, for sure. Something about setting up a vampire database or family history archive or something...

Suddenly Damon had an idea. He pulled over and started typing into the internet browser of his smartphone so fast his fingers were a blur.

"What?" Elena asked urgently.

"Not sure, yet," Damon said, "I just had a brilliant fucking flash of inspiration. It's a long story but I'll explain if anything comes of this. This fellow absolutely hates my guts, but Stefan once did him a real solid, so he might be willing to help. It could go either way."

Elena nodded, that "too cautious to hope" look on her face, and didn't press him further. Instead she looked at him, heaved a sigh, and demanded, "So, you're really going to make me go to prom?"

"Yup."

"There's nothing I can do to convince you to change your mind?"

"You could agree to stay home when I find Stefan and not ever throw yourself in Klaus' path again for the rest of your life."

"Anything but that?"

"Not a chance."

"You're horrible."

"Yup."

He glanced over and met her eyes, which had a hint of amusement behind her annoyance. He grinned at her and pinched her cheek. She slapped his arm. Then the settled back into their seats and spent the rest of the drive in comfortable silence.

* * *

When they got back to the house he was surprised that rather than heading up to her... to _Stefan's..._ bedroom she followed him into the study.

"Damon?" she asked quietly, looking a bit uncertain.

"Not gonna cave on the prom issue, princess," he said amiably, reaching for his decanter and a glass. "Better just give it up."

"No," she corrected him, "that's not what I wanted to say. I wanted to tell you... It's just... I... I really appreciate everything you've been doing for me these past few weeks. I know I've been a huge pain, and I know I stress you out. But you've been wonderful... the driving all over the country, letting me stay here all the time, searching non-stop for Stefan," (the ruthless nagging and bullying her into finishing high school), "just... all the support you've been giving me. I'm not going to lie to you, Damon, I didn't think you were capable of being supportive. But regardless of my expectations the fact is you've been absolutely amazing and I really don't know what I would have done without you. Really."

As she spoke a blush crept over her cheeks and nose. She was a little embarrassed, felt a little silly for telling him this. These were not the sorts of conversations Damon and Elena had, after all. Her blush made him smile.

"No problem, princess, I'm just doing my job," he told her.

She smiled at him. "Looking for Stefan might be your job, Damon, but it isn't your job to take care of me when I'm falling apart."

Was she serious? After all this, did she really have no idea how much she meant to him? Did she really think him capable of standing by and watching her pain?

"No," he replied steadily, holding her beautiful dark eyes in his gaze with a smile, "it's not my job. That part is a privilege, and my pleasure."

She looked up into his eyes in silence, apparently speechless. A wave of tenderness flooded him, followed by a wave of lust so strong it made his toes ache. How was it that he wanted to spend his life protecting this woman from every harm and evil that threatened her, but simultaneously wanted to tear the clothes off her body and ravage her until they were both too sweaty, breathless, scratched, bitten and bruised to even think coherently? No matter, he thought with a sigh, since he couldn't do either.

Unable to resist the temptation, he reached up and brushed a stray lock of hair out of her face, allowing his fingertips to glide softly along her jaw bone and along the side of her pale neck before coming to rest again by his side. She held his gaze for a moment longer, long enough for him to see her eyes darken and hear her breath come just a little bit shorter, then she broke their eye contact and took a few steps away, looking down at his desk so he couldn't see the flush in her cheeks. Then her expression changed and she looked up frowning, her eyebrows knit in concern.

"Damon," she asked, "What is all this stuff?" She gestured to a stack of papers on his desk involving contact information for his favorite hotels in Monaco and Monte Carlo, passport renewal forms, currency exchange rates, and a pretty blonde ex-girlfriend's phone number.

Oh, he thought, of course she was worried. She probably thought he was about to skip town and leave everyone hanging. Though he was a little insulted, he couldn't really blame her. Even three months ago he probably would have done just that.

"Oh, don't worry about that, Elena. I'm not going to punk out on you. That stuff is all for later."

"Later?" she echoed, not looking comforted at all.

"Yeah, later. I'm not going to go anywhere until we have Stefan home safe and detoxed."

She blinked at him frowning harder.

"Go?" she asked, "Go, when? Go, where? All this paperwork is about places in Europe!" She looked distraught, which both confused and upset him. What on earth did she want from him? Did she honestly expect he'd just hang around Mystic Falls forever? How could he explain himself to her? When he spoke he took care not to raise his voice in frustration.

"Elena, once Stefan is home and back to normal I need to get out of here for a while. It's been a hell of a few months, and I could really use some down time. Besides, there's not much left here in Mystic Falls for me. I've burned quite a few bridges here and we both know it. It's time to move on, figure out what I want to do with the next few decades, maybe even get out of my brother's hair and leave him alone for a while... it would be for the first time since we died and I'm sure he'd appreciate it."

She didn't move or say anything, so he went on, irritation beginning to bleed into his tone.

"Look, I may be an idiot, but I'm not a masochist, Elena. I'll bring Stefan home to you like I promised, and I'll help you heal him, but after all that I really can't just sit on the sidelines and watch you two be in love with each other. I'd probably die of a sweetness overdose."

That jab got a reaction out of her.

"I thought we were friends," she murmured in a tiny voice, hurt in her eyes.

Her words made him mad. How dare she act like the injured party in this situation? Didn't she have any idea of what he was going through right now? Did she really still not grasp the hell he was in?

"We _are_ friends, Elena," he spoke slowly as though to a child, "and that fact is the most amazing thing in my whole life. You're one of the only friends I've ever had. _Ever_. But the thing is, I cannot content myself with that, no matter how much I want to. God, I want to. I want to be happy being your _friend_ and not ever wanting anything more, but I'm just not. I'd love to tell you I'm only human, but I can't even fucking say that much."

She looked pained, the way she always did when he or Stefan mentioned their lack of humanity. "I'm not doing this on purpose," she said, her voice uncharacteristically meek.

"Doing what, exactly?" he demanded, growing a little more irritated, "I'd love to hear what it is you think ' _this'_ is between us. Do you think I'm sitting here wasting away while you lead me on like some sort of groupie?"

She looked like she wanted to say something, but now he was getting more and more worked up and the words were just spilling out of him, so he plowed ahead, not waiting to hear her response. As he spoke he crept slowly towards her, one step at a time, looking very much like a wild animal stalking its prey, feral and dangerous. She looked a little afraid of him then, and it just egged him on.

"Don't worry Elena. That's not the case at all. I remember... it's always been _Stefan._ It will always be _Stefan._ I have no delusions whatsoever about where I stand in your affections. I've told you once, and I'll tell you again, Elena Gilbert. I feel, and _it sucks._ "

He'd walked so close that the last was spoken in a whisper, his face barely two inches from hers. He was so close he could smell the individual scents on her body: salty sheen of her perspiration as it mingled with the heady smell of her desire, the vervain in her necklace, the light smell of her perfume, and the mouth-watering smell of her fear as it sped her heart rate and pumped the hot, sweet blood through her veins. This time he would not back down, he would not step away. Instead he grabbed her hips hard enough to bruise her, and pulled her body flush against his. Through their clothes with his heightened senses he could feel her nipples contract as they touched his chest, could see her eyes widen and darken as she felt how achingly hard he was as he held her against him.

"You want me," he continued speaking in a low, predatory voice, his mouth right next to her ear, "as badly as I want you. I can smell how wet you are right now, you know. It's so maddeningly distracting I can barely think of anything except how much I want to touch you, taste you, bury myself inside you and fuck you and feed on you until you don't even know your own name. But you don't love me, you don't want to feel this thing you feel for me. And so I'm left standing here fantasizing, dying to take you, knowing how easily I could reach out, touch you, make you come so hard you'd pass out in my arms... but I never will, because you don't really want it. You're my _friend_."

He spat it out the syllable like a dirty word. She leaned back within his grip to look up into his eyes, opened her mouth to speak, her expression full of distress and confusion and desire. He put two gentle fingers over her lips to silence her, unable to stop speaking now that he'd said so much.

"And that," he continued in a tone just barely above a whisper, "is the sickest part of all of this. It turns out I've come to crave your affection, your approval, even more than I want to see your gorgeous body impaled on my cock, even more than I want to sink my fangs into your sweet throat and show you exactly how it's supposed to feel when you have a vampire for a lover. So I can't fuck you, no matter how badly I know you want it, even though I can smell you dripping wet for me, because I know that for you it's just lust, and God help me, that's not good enough." He pulled back, looked at her, imploring, and threw the last of his dignity to the curb.

"Tell me I'm wrong, princess," he begged her. "Tell me you want me. Tell me to take you. Get me out of this purgatory you've trapped me in, because right now you are driving me absolutely insane."

She gazed up at him with wide, lust-blackened eyes and whispered in a shaky voice, "That makes two of us. Damon... God... but I shouldn't... I can't... I..." she trailed off helplessly, her body quivering with tension as tears threatened to fall.

Damon made a strangled and agonized noise in the back of his throat.

"Then go, please." he said, defeated, releasing her hips and letting his hands fall limp at his sides. "Please. Now. Before I do something we both regret. Get out."

She nodded and fled out of the room and up the stairs, whispering, "I'm so sorry," as she went.

As he watched her retreat he growled and kicked an end table, which splintered and fell sending books and a paperweight tumbling across the room. "Not as sorry as I am," he muttered, and drank five healthy gulps straight from his whiskey bottle and sinking helplessly into his leather chair.

He had no idea how long he sat there, forlorn and lost in thought, before his phone rang, startling him back to the present. The number was one he didn't recognize.

"Hello?" he said, and his voice sounded weary to his own ears.

"Mr Salvatore?"

"Speaking."

"This is Charles Whitfield," said a mild tenor voice with a soft southern drawl, "I believe I've had the dubious honor of making your acquaintance before. You contacted me this evening regarding your brother. It pains me to know that Stefan is in trouble, but I might have some information you can use to help him. I have a lot of friends, Mr Salvatore, and they are very well-informed people. Perhaps we can set aside our... differences... for a few moments to help your brother."

"Indeed," Damon agreed, "And... Thank you. I know we didn't part on the best of terms when we met last. Do you want me to come to you?" he offered, trying not to sound too excited or hopeful (or drunk).

"No," Charles replied flatly. "I do not. Frankly, I never want to see your face in my hometown again. But you can meet me and my assistant tomorrow at sundown in North Carolina, on neutral territory. I'll send you the address."

 _Finally_ , Damon thought, _a lead worth following_. He was really growing tired of his wild goose chasing. Not to mention this was an excellent excuse not to be in this house anymore, wallowing in rejection.

"I'll be there."


	9. Conflicted

Safely ensconced in Stefan's bedroom Elena leaned against the sturdy wooden door, breathing heavily from the speed of her flight up the stairs.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" she asked herself aloud, then laughed at her own double meaning.

Half of her, the sane, rational half, was shouting, _What the fuck is wrong with you, walking this tightrope with Damon, jerking him around like the worst kind of cock-tease, entertaining his attentions and soaking up his affection while your boyfriend, his BROTHER, is in a hell of addiction and misery and out of his mind because he couldn't bear to lose either one of you. What kind of awful person are you?_

That rational part of her brain, however, was almost overshadowed by the protests from her primitive, visceral half, which was asserting its own agenda in an uncomplicated and primal scream of need and want. _What the fuck is wrong with you?_ it said. _Get your ass back downstairs and give that man what you're both dying for. RIGHT NOW._

Caught between the two parts of herself and able to satisfy neither, Elena slumped, upset and quivering with unslaked desire, against the door, the image of Damon's fathomless blue eyes seared onto the backs of her closed eyelids.

Never in her life had she felt this way before. Her whole body pulsed with need. Her toes and fingers ached, her scalp and throat prickled with goosebumps, and at her core a liquid heat pooled, growing so strong she felt sure she was about to burst. She had no precedent, no prior experience to help her deal with this insatiable fire that seemed to be consuming her alive.

Matt had certainly never ignited such heat in her. Their relationship had been built on a strong friendship, but not passion. Their intimate times had been filled with laughter and playfullness, two old friends exploring their freshly budding sexuality as new lovers.

And Stefan... she thought back to their first time... with Stefan there had been passion in abundance, and their coming together had been graced by his slow, deliberate worship of her body with an almost religious fervor. Her heart had swelled with tenderness and love and she'd opened under his reverent touch like a budding flower in the sun, basking in a shared joy so amazing that the first time she'd climaxed in his arms she'd had tears in her eyes.

Still, as monumental as her love for Stefan was, nothing in the limited experience of her eighteen years had done anything to even remotely prepare her for the onslaught of carnal craving in which she was currently drowning. She'd never felt such a magnetic attraction before, where she had to consciously restrain herself from touching someone.

She'd never known anyone before who had the power to transfix her with a glance, sending jolts of desire like electric shocks into the pit of her belly by simply meeting her eyes. Sure, she'd always been aware of Stefan while he was in a room, but in the grill earlier she hadn't been able to think an entire thought that did not in some way involve Damon. She felt obsessed, crazed, and just now in the study the heat of his gaze and the nearness of his body had nearly been her undoing.

She leaned on the cool wood of the door, hoping to calm herself, to ground herself, but the longer she stood still the more she felt like she was burning. All she could think of was Damon, the low baritone growl of his voice in her ear, the uncharacteristically tender brush of his fingers against her face that belied all the harsh words he'd ever spoken to her. She could smell the scent of him- soap, cologne, and a faint dash of whiskey- as his inhumanly strong hands had bruised her, pulling her against him, grinding against her body just firmly enough that she could feel his rock-hard erection pressing against her, sending her stomach into a fit of butterflies and ruthlessly claiming an answering state of arousal from her own body. Had she ever been this wet, this swollen from desire? She couldn't think of a time, and he'd barely even touched her.

 _God_ , she thought, _what would it feel like... NO!_

She shut the thought down as quickly as it'd come, but the damage was done. Her imagination was already inundated with a kaleidoscope of sinful images for her consideration: Damon's fist in her hair, pulling her against him, tearing aside her clothes and burying his fingers inside her hungry sex... his clever tongue dancing over her most intimate places, maybe stopping to plant a hungry kiss on the pulse-point of her upper thigh... his body, naked and glistening, bending her forward over the back of that leather sofa in the study, burying himself inside her, too desperate to be gentle, claiming her deep and hard until their hips met while she clung to the couch as her legs went too weak to hold her... his strong arms wrapped around her, lowering her to his bed and coming slowly into her with a sigh, his unguarded eyes full of peace and love, for once, as he lowered his head to kiss her throat...

With each image her need grew to a new, impossibly intense level and, desperate for relief, for satisfaction, for sanity, Elena stumbled to the bed, sliding her shirt and jeans off as she went. The cool crispness of the sheets welcomed her, and she curled up on her side, her trapped arm wrapped protectively around her aching breasts, the hand kneading roughly at the tortured flesh. Her free hand moved of its own volition, gliding over the fevered skin of her torso and hips to feel the dripping heat of her sex behind the wet lace of her panties. Her hips bucked involuntarily as she brushed her clitoris through the fabric, slipped her hand inside the lace and allowed two fingers to penetrate her hot, starving core. Then, with a choked gasp she imagined another, stronger hand making that same journey, or a tongue...

All of a sudden it was too much for her to handle. With one last brush of her fingers the universe exploded around her, and Elena came, gasping and shuddering against her hand, in Stefan's bed, with Damon's name whispered like a desperate, breathy prayer on her lips.

* * *

She came back to herself slowly and, sprawled languid on the bed, she let her mind wander, torn between relief and finally taking the edge off of her lust (oh... but only the edge...and she could already feel her desire growing again), and guilt over what she'd just done. It wasn't that she believed the act of masturbation was wrong; her parents had taken pains to ensure that she and Jeremy were not uncomfortable in their own bodies. It was the fact that she'd allowed her sexual attraction to Stefan's brother to get so out of hand that had her so uneasy.

_Stefan's brother. Stefan's BROTHER. Maybe if you call him that instead of Damon you'll remember to keep your hands off of him, to stop fantasizing about things you can never have._

Probably not, she decided. She was in too deep for that. The evidence of that was clear in her reaction to Damon's travel plans.

When had Damon become such a real, important, vital part of her life? Why did the thought of his leaving for Europe after Stefan's return fill her with such despair? It was mere weeks ago that she'd thought of him as little more than a maverick and a nuisance, a dangerous wild-card with an unknown agenda.

Once, not too long ago, She'd told Stefan she was glad Katherine had broken Damon's heart. The memory echoed now in her mind and made her feel hollow inside.

_Maybe this heartache will be good for him. It'll remind him that he has one, even if it doesn't beat._

_I won't hold my breath,_ Stefan had replied blithely. Stefan had known. He'd known how much Damon didn't want to feel, didn't want to remember his humanity. He hadn't counted on his brother falling for Elena.

At the time she'd had barely any indication that Damon was capable of any true emotions at all, least of all love. She'd been glad of his pain, even, because it made him seem like less of a monster. Looking back now, the idea distressed her profoundly. For someone as passionate as he clearly was, with feelings as deep as the ones he'd confessed to her lately, to suddenly realize that the burning love and devotion that has kept him going, given him a reason to keep living for the past century and a half, is unrequited, one sided... he must have felt so lost.

_"All those years I blamed Stefan. But no one forced me to love her. It was my own choice. I made the wrong choice. Tell Stefan I'm sorry."_

She wanted to go to him, to take him in her arms like she had that night as he'd been dying. She wanted to reassure him that his life did matter, even if he was no longer human, that he did have people here in Mystic Falls who cared. She wanted to hold him and card her fingers through his hair, maybe to let him sleep for a while against her body with the quiet knowledge that he wasn't alone.

"Right," she told herself, "because crawling into his bed and holding him all night long and telling him how much he means to you is clearly totally appropriate, and also a really good way to assure him that you think of him as a _friend."_

God, she had no idea he'd be so upset.

 _"We_ are _friends, Elena... and that fact is the most amazing thing in my whole life. You're one of the only friends I've ever had. Ever. But the thing is, I cannot content myself with that, no matter how much I want to. God, I want to. I want to be happy being your_ friend _and not ever wanting anything more, but I'm just not. I'd love to tell you I'm only human, but I can't even fucking say that much."_

His frustration and anger had stunned her like a punch straight in the stomach, and she'd just stood here, unable to comfort him, unable to stop the pain he was feeling because of her.

 _"You don't love me,"_ he'd said, his voice full of acid, _"you don't want to feel this thing you feel for me. And so I'm left standing here fantasizing, dying to take you, knowing how easily I could reach out, touch you, make you come so hard you'd pass out in my arms... but I never will, because you don't really want it. You're my_ friend _._ "

She was grateful now that he'd stopped her from speaking then. She had no idea what was about to come out of her mouth, but she was sure it would have just gotten her deeper in trouble with him. Because as he spoke she realized he was right. She agreed with him. _Friends_ wasn't good enough. It was an inadequate word both for what they shared already and for what she wanted from him in the long run.

 _Which is?_ her mind prompted.

To that she had no answer, and eventually started to drift off into a troubled and exhausted sleep. Stefan... Damon... the yin and yang of her life. Her heart was so full of conflicting emotions she thought it was about to overflow, and she didn't know how to resolve any of this mess she'd created. She was Stefan's... but she wanted more than anything to be there for Damon, heal his scars, care for him, and yes, enjoy his body. She wanted all of that... yet she couldn't fathom that she would ever love Stefan less because of it. It was so confusing. The way she felt for Stefan... it had nothing to do with the depth of her attraction to Damon. It was like a totally different emotion. But she wasn't supposed to feel _ANYTHING_ so strong for Damon, and she knew it. Stefan would be crushed if he ever found out how fickle she was being in his absence. She felt suddenly like she was spread too thin, like there wasn't enough of her to go around.

The last thing she remembered before unconsciousness claimed her was the snide, mocking voice of Katherine Pierce ringing in her ears...

_"It's okay to love them both. I did."_


	10. Turning Points

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone! I hope you're enjoying it so far. I've been taking the opportunity to do some long-overdue proofreading and clean-up as I post, and I know I've been enjoying revisiting this story and universe. Let me know what you think! :-D

Elena woke the next morning a bit more clear-headed, but certainly no closer to answering any of her questions.

Having never been one to hide her head in the sand to avoid uncomfortable truths, as she showered and brushed her teeth she gave herself a stern talking-to.

"Okay, so it's obvious that you've developed feelings for Damon. It's not advisable, clearly, but it's totally understandable, given the circumstances."

Even just admitting that truth to herself made her feel as though a huge weight had been lifted from her chest. What did it mean to her, though?

"Nothing," she insisted firmly. "In the end, it can mean nothing. Because Stefan is going to come home, and betraying him like that would be completely inexcusable. It would make you no different than Katherine."

Stefan deserved better from her than that. And having Stefan around again would make it much easier for her to remember all of the wonderful things about their relationship that were worth saving.

 _Not to worry,_ her cruel brain reminded her, _because not only will Stefan be here, but Damon will be gone and you won't have to put up with the temptation anymore. The next time you see him you could be an old woman, if you ever do see him again._

She was suddenly overcome with the same sense of panic that had prompted her outburst in the study the night before. The thought of never seeing Damon again, never talking to him...

_...never knowing what might have been..._

Elena shook her head. This line of thinking was going to drive her out of her mind.

"It is time," she said, staring at her reflection in the bathroom mirror and speaking aloud to keep her fickle thoughts from wandering, "to stop living in stupid teenaged fantasies, enslaved to your hormones, and start acting like a decent person. Damon is not for you. You are not for Damon. The sooner you accept this, the sooner he will, and the sooner everything will go back to normal. If Damon wants to go away for a while, that is his business, and you are not going to throw a tantrum about it like some sort of petulant five-year-old. He has gone above and beyond the call of duty for you, and you do not need to pay him back by being an ungrateful, greedy child. End. Of. Story."

It was time to forget this infatuation with her own unlikely Lancelot before she broke Stefan's heart and ruined her reputation over it. It was reasonable, sensible, and the right thing to do. She sounded confident enough as she said the words... and as she walked back out into the bedroom and dressed herself for school, she almost believed them.

A little while later, dressed for school and in dire need of a cup of coffee Elena stood at the threshold of the bedroom and hesitated. What on earth was she going to say to him when she saw him? The way they'd parted the night before...

 _Oh well, nothing to be done for it_ , she thought. _I can't stay in here forever._ Swallowing her nerves she held her head high and walked downstairs, only to find her bravery unnecessary. Damon was nowhere to be found.

She did find that the coffee had been brewed on an automatic timer so it was piping hot and filled the kitchen with a warm, homey smell. There was also a large white box on the kitchen table. The obvious peace offering made her smile, and she went to fill up her favorite mug, which was waiting for her next to the coffee pot. When she picked it up she found a piece of paper tucked beneath it, folded, with her name written on it in elegantly old-fashioned cursive. As she read the contents of the incredibly brief note she marveled over Damon's ability to pack so much subtext into a few seemingly innocuous phrases.

_I think I'm onto something- might be gone for a few days.  
_ _I probably won't have cell or internet access. You'll have to manage without my dulcet voice for a bit._

In the past few weeks she'd been learning Damon-speak, growing to understand how hard it was for him to express his real emotions and how he used his mocking sense of humor to guard himself against pain and rejection, and so she knew that what he actually meant was, "You're probably not going to hear from me for a bit, try not to worry."

_Don't stress out about my abrupt departure, I didn't want to disturb your beauty rest._

That meant, "I'm not running off because of last night, but I wasn't ready to face you yet, either."

 _Ric is coming to bring you to school since your car is at home._  
If you stop going to school I will KNOW. If you skip your prom, I will KNOW.  
Don't forget the deal.

It was signed simply, _D.S._ Her stomach flipped in excitement and anxiety. His idea from last night must have panned out, and for him to have left immediately made her think the lead must be hot. She didn't know whether to be more annoyed at him for leaving without explaining further, concerned for his safety in an unknown place without his phone or a computer, or pissed that he'd already stuck Alaric on her tail to ensure she kept up her end of their deal. Nice to know he hadn't lost the power to irritate her.

Curious despite herself, Elena went to the table with her coffee and started to investigate the large white box that had apparently been left for her. Written on the lid, again in Damon's hand, was simply the phrase, _No Excuses._ She had no idea what that meant in Damon-speak. Rather, she had no idea until she looked inside.

She gasped in shock as she opened it. There, wrapped in tissue paper, she found an absolutely stunning vintage evening gown in champagne colored satin that looked like it should have belonged to Elizabeth Taylor, or Ingrid Bergman, or some other movie star from the days of black-and-white. Elena was completely certain she'd never laid her hands on an article of clothing so beautiful, or so expensive. He couldn't possibly expect her to wear this to a high school dance, could he?

 _Of course he does,_ her brain assured her, _he knows you haven't bought yourself a dress, so he did it himself. And you can bet he'll be damned pouty if you don't wear it, take stupid prom pictures in it, and like it._

There was more. Underneath the soft ripples of fabric she found a pair of elegant and tasteful t-strap heels as well as a pair of white, opera length, kid gloves. She smiled at the sweetly anachronistic gesture, realizing that the last time Damon went to a dance it was probably called a ball, and that it was probably long enough ago that a woman would never _consider_ attending without gloves.

The most unbelievable thing in the box, though, was the black jewelry case she found tucked in the bottom corner. The box was labled "Victoria Salvatore," so Elena figured it was probably something that had been in the family for a few generations. As she opened it her mouth fell open in complete shock. Glittering against the velvet cushion like a Faberge egg was a heavy, ornate choker made entirely of what appeared to be rubies. She stared at it wide-eyed for a few moments, unable to process that Damon expected _her_ to wear this, as though it was common for teenaged girls to own necklaces that belonged in museums, behind glass, or on the neck of some queen in a fairy tale.

 _This is how he sees you,_ she thought, suddenly conflicted all over again, _and this is what he thinks you're worth. How on Earth are you going to just let him walk out of your life?_

The honk of a car horn startled her out of her reverie, signaling to her that Alaric was outside to drive her to school, so she hastily closed the box, grabbed her book bag, dumped her coffee in a travel mug and headed out the door. Lost in her thoughts, she must have been even quieter than usual on the drive to school, because as Alaric pulled into his space in the faculty parking lot he turned to her and said very frankly, "So, I'm sorry to say it's concerned not-quite-parent time. Wanna tell me what's up? You look lost, Elena."

She shrugged. She didn't want to burden Alaric with her emotional drivel.

"It's kind of girl stuff."

"I've known a few girls in my life."

"Do you really want to know?"

"Try me. We have a few minutes."

Taking him at his word Elena decided to go with the truth. She told him how amazing Damon had been to her since Stefan's disappearance, how he was in love with her, how she was hopelessly confused about what to do about it. She left out the more scandalous details like how her burning desire to fuck Damon was making her crazy, but she did explain a bit of how torn and ambivalent she felt about how to deal with him as well as her distress over his impending travel plans.

Ric listened patiently to her until she had gotten it all off of her chest, waiting until she finished to respond.

"Sometimes I forget you're just barely eighteen," he said a little sadly.

"Sorry," she blushed. "I figured you wouldn't really want to deal with all this. But I can't talk to Bonnie because she barely even tolerates Damon now, when he's behaving like a saint, and I can't really talk to Caroline because she can't keep her mouth shut under the best of circumstances... I know it's stupid."

Alaric shook his head, "No. Not stupid. You're just young, Elena, and you're in a very unique and unprecedented sort of situation. This would be hard for someone with decades of relationship experience to navigate. You're allowed to not know what you want."

"Not if I hurt Stefan and Damon because of it."

"They're big boys, Elena. If they're going to choose to be in love with an eighteen year old they have to know what they're getting into. They both forget when they're busy being hard on you that they have one and a half centuries of dealing with their feelings under their belts already."

"They suck at it."

"Your words, not mine." He grinned.

"Well... what would you do?" she asked him.

He looked at her for a long moment, searching her eyes for something. Finally he spoke.

"I... am not a parent. I am definitely not your parent, and I am probably not a fantastic role model. But you're stuck in the middle of this situation and you spend your whole life having to act like an adult, so I'll be damned if I'm going to treat you like a child. What I would say to one of my closest friends in this situation is: I can't decide this for you, I can only encourage you to make the most well-thought-out choices you possibly can. They're both fundamentally good people, I think... and it's obvious to anyone with eyes that they're both absolutely crazy about you. But they both have issues, Elena, that seriously complicate their lives, and you need to consider that. Most of all, though, you need to think about what is best for _you,_ and what _you_ need to be happy."

"Doing the right thing isn't always what makes you happy," she countered.

"No, but being in love shouldn't make you miserable."

"Since when?"

"Touchee." They smiled at each other then, and he turned off the ignition. She gathered her books and climbed out, and he followed her, locking the car behind them. As they walked he looked thoughtful, wistful, and just before they went inside he hesitated.

"What?" Elena said.

"Just... while you're busy stressing about right and wrong, remember that inaction is a choice, Elena. And know that often it is much easier to live with the things we've done than the things we never did. That's something I have a lot of experience with."

With that he left her and went into his classroom to prepare for first period, leaving Elena on the steps of the school with a lot on her mind.

* * *

The days had passed slowly and tediously in Damon's absence, and with no news of him Elena grew increasingly anxious, despite his warning that he wouldn't be able to call for a little while.

Why on Earth had she ever wanted to be normal? Normal sucked. Normal was powerless, helpless, ignorant. She wanted to work some crazy vampire mojo, or witch spell or something, _anything_ to make her feel like she could help at all. Her frustration and worry for both Salvatore brothers threatened to consume her until on the sixth day after he left when she finally got her wish.

Bonnie had met with Lucy's coven, had cast some crazy spells over the empty vial from Damon's bedroom that had held Klaus' blood. That day she wrangled Elena, Tyler, Caroline and Jeremy into Alaric's classroom during the lunch hour and, locking the door and putting a magical ward on it to protect against intrusion, they formed a circle around Elena, the werewolf, the witch, the vampire, and the human all taking hands to cast the final incantation which would give Elena the power of compulsion over the most powerful dark creature in the world. The lights flickered and the air moved around her as Bonnie spoke and her friends chanted their well-rehearsed Latin refrain, and she supposed it must have worked, but when all was said and done she didn't feel any different, didn't feel any more useful or powerful.

 _What good are crazy powers right now, anyway?_ she thought petulantly, _I still can't do anything to help Damon find Stefan. I still feel like I'm in the dark about the things that matter. I'm still worried sick about the safety of two of the most important people in my life... I still miss Stefan. And Damon._

That is what she had been thinking for the past twenty four hours. Now she sat, as elegant as a queen in her satin gown, on a folding chair, with her gloved hands in her lap, at the prom she couldn't wait to leave.

Matt, who had tried his best to be a good date for the disconsolate Elena, was finally off dancing with a tiny, elfin red head with a heart-shaped face and tousled curls. She was so sweet, so blessedly ignorant of anything that went bump in the night... The way she turned her huge green eyes on Matt in adoration was what he deserved. She was happy for him, especially because she no longer felt like she was ruining his night.

A glance over the dance floor found Bonnie and Jeremy laughing, drinking punch that was very likely spiked, and Caroline arm-in-arm with Tyler greeting the newly crowned prom queen, looking like the quintessential high-class couple from Mystic Falls. Mrs. Lockwood would be proud... until she found out her son and his arm candy were both the types of monsters she'd devoted her life to destroying. The two played their part well; for all Tyler's attempts to come off like an uncouth frat boy most of the time, his years of good breeding and being in the public eye had left their mark and he carried himself with the same quiet confidence his father had displayed. Caroline fit perfectly on his arm, floating like a princess in a sheath of midnight blue silk with her blond hair cascading loose over her shoulders and down her back.

With a pang Elena realized she didn't even know the prom queen's name. A year ago she would have been practically a shoe-in for the crown. Now, here she was, at the dance only under duress, and her ever-faithful Matt had been forced to abandon her for a girl more capable of having fun. What had happened to her? Death. Loss. Grief. Vampires. Everything. Pretending to be normal would never be anything more than pretending, she thought sadly. Elena the cheerleader is gone forever.

Lost in thought, she didn't even hear his approach.

"Hey now," he said behind her, and her ears drank up the sound of his voice like water on the parched desert sand, "nobody puts Baby in a corner."

As she spun in her chair to face him she was glad to be sitting, because the sight of him made her knees turn to jelly. She couldn't have prevented the smile from breaking out over her face even if she'd wanted to. Clad in a black Armani suit and a blood-red button down with French cuffs he looked good enough to eat. And he was home. He was alive. He was all in one piece.

"You're okay," she said, her voice breathy with relief. It soon became tinted with irritation, though.

"Six days!" She scolded, "You could have called! Texted! Something." She reached out a gloved hand to smack him in the chest. He caught the offending limb in his own hand and used it to guide her to her feet.

"I was a little busy," he replied in an amused tone that indicated he was pleasantly surprised she'd been worried about him, "and trying to keep you under the vampire radar. Not as easy as you might think."

Still holding her hand, he took a step back and took a long moment to look her over from head to toe, eyeing his artistic creation with appreciation.

"Almost perfect," he said, "but it looks like you forgot something."

From his breast pocket he produced the velvet jewelry box full of rubies. Elena started shaking her head.

"Damon, those are priceless. I left them home on purpose. They've been in your family for a long time, obviously, and this is just a stupid school dance! If something happened to them..."

"They were made to be worn," he interrupted in a firm voice, "And you are going to wear them."

Something in his tone made her protests die in her throat and she stood perfectly still as he draped the heavy collar of rubies around her throat. She shivered as he fastened it; the jewels were cold against her skin. He stepped back, and she looked up into his face, which was uncharacteristically unguarded.

"Your throat looks amazing in red," he whispered as a flicker of darkness crossed his features. Elena went weak, blushed, and opted not to respond. Then his expression changed, turning wistful and perhaps a little sad.

"What?" she asked, tilting her head.

He shook his head, the open sincerity in his eyes disappearing all of a sudden, replaced by his trademark arrogant, "I know something you don't know" smirk.

"What?" she asked again, more insistently.

With an infuriating grin he took her hand (which she'd forgotten he was still holding) and walked her ceremoniously towards the dance floor, as though it was 1864 and she was a well-bred lady being escorted to a fancy ball. He bowed an invitation and stood still, awaiting her reply. Elena refused to be distracted.

"I will dance with you, but only _after_ you tell me what you're so smug about!"

He rolled his eyes and leaned close to her ear. His proximity made her heart flutter, but the words he whispered almost floored her.

"I found him."

She met his eyes in elation and shock.

"Stefan?" she asked in a whisper. He raised his eyebrows at her.

"Jimmy Hoffa, actually," he replied glibly, "I've heard people were asking around about him."

She narrowed her eyes at his mocking.

"Why are we here, then? We shouldn't be at this stupid party if we could be-"

He silenced her with a finger against her lips, and even through her excitement that skin-on-skin contact sent a wave of desire rolling over her. She had to suppress the urge to take that arrogant finger between her teeth and close her lips suggestively around it, just to see Damon's smug expression falter.

"We have plane tickets out of D.C. tomorrow afternoon, and hotel reservations in Hattiesburg tomorrow night, already booked. We are going to get him, but we are going with a plan, full stomachs, and a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we will rescue Stefan, but tonight _I_ need to rest and eat, even if you think you don't. It's been... a trying week. Besides, I believe you promised me a dance."

"You bought me a plane ticket?" she said, still absorbing his words.

"Of course," he said ruefully. "I've given up hope that you'd actually stay home and take care of yourself. Besides, though I hate to admit it, the witch is right. You _are_ our best chance. You need your bags packed by noon tomorrow, ok, Princess?"

Overflowing with gratitude and some alien feeling she supposed was called "hope," she couldn't speak to respond, and instead flung her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder.

He stiffened in surprise, but only for a moment, then his strong arms came up to rest around her waist, pulling her towards him in an embrace that was simultaneously totally chaste, yet brimming with all the unspoken passion between them. After holding her close for about twice as long as was probably socially prudent Damon stepped back, clearing his throat and blinking a few times. Elena took his cue and stepped back herself, smoothing her dress and trying to calm her emotions. This time when he offered her his hand she took it and let him whisk her out onto the dance floor.

Damon's cool, arrogant demeanor and supernatural grace made him the ideal dance partner, and he somehow managed to turn the grating pop song pounding through the stereo into a steamy salsa, twirling and spinning Elena as he moved his body teasingly close to hers, never quite touching it, with skill that spoke of decades of practice and experience. After a few minutes Elena caught his energy and threw herself into the dance, moving her hips to the music and enjoying the feeling of floating that only comes when dancing with an unparalleled partner. She laughed as she realized they were attracting attention. The gyrating and grinding of the rest of her classmates slowed and eventually stopped almost entirely as they watched Damon and Elena move.

After a few minutes Tyler and Caroline joined them, Tyler once again betraying his bad-ass image by knowing exactly how to guide her around the dance floor. Once they had broken the ice a few more confident couples started to trickle out of the woodwork and for a few brief moment the Mystic Falls High School prom was filled with actual dancing and not just the glorified humping that seemed to pass for it these days. Elena felt legitimately happy for the first time all night. This was not a stupid school event. This was a memory worth having.

Elena laughed, free and uninhibited, just from the joy of the moment, and when she lifted her face to meet Damon's eyes she saw him smiling down at her. This was not a conniving smile, a sneaky smile, a sarcastic smile, an angry smile, or a manipulative smile. Damon Salvatore was actually happy, and the fact shone on his perfect face. His pale cheeks were almost rosy from exertion and his hair was tousled from the movements. The sight of his sparkling blue eyes took her breath away as the song came to a close. This boyish carefree face, surely, was what Katherine must have seen in him all those years ago... She held his gaze and tried to commit every detail the sight permanently to her memory.

He grinned at her playfully and dipped her dramatically as the song came to a close, holding her low until the last chord had faded and then picking her up to set her on her feet as if she weighed no more than a child. She grinned back at him, exhilarated, feeling like a princess in her stunning gown and her jewels, on the arm of a dashing gentleman as he walked her back to the edge of the dance floor. Soon they found themselves standing next to an abandoned table littered with handbags and uncomfortable satin shoes, and Elena leaned into the strong frame of his arms; it had been so long since she'd felt so genuinely happy she was reluctant to have him let her go and end this perfect moment.

"Thank you," she sighed, resting her head against his shoulder and inhaling the scent of him. She could feel his delighted chuckle against her own chest.

"What for?" he asked her, and she savored the simple, earnest tone of his voice. She raised her head to meet his eyes.

"For buying me this dress. For making me come here against my will. For showing up and making it not suck. For finding Stefan. For not arguing about letting me come with you to save him. For being an amazing dancer. You know, basically for everything."

He leaned towards her slightly and asked, "What about for being overbearing and heavy handed, for starting fights with your friends, and always deciding what's best for you without asking?"

"Just part of your unique charm," she insisted. "You drive me insane, but I do realize you're just trying to take care of me."

"For tormenting you, for almost killing Jeremy, for being completely unwilling to give up human blood... for trying to turn you into a vampire last month?" His voice was flippant but the words were deadly serious.

She leaned up to whisper her response in his ear, savoring his closeness.

"I already told you. I like you just fine the way you are. All of you, not just the pretty parts."

As she finished speaking she let her lips graze his rough cheek and he turned and leaned into the contact like a cat might have rubbed against her. She froze as a wave of lust washed over her, her lips frozen just centimeters away from his. He too had gone deadly still, so that she could barely feel his breath on her face.

 _What are you doing?_ she asked herself, and in that split second she knew beyond all doubt that her choice was already made... because in that moment, the thought of pulling away was like a physical pain in her gut, and she could not make herself do it. Right and wrong didn't matter. Her reputation didn't matter. For a minute even Stefan didn't matter. Everything that mattered to her in the universe was standing right in front of her, and there was no way in hell she was going to let it slip through her fingers.

 _Tomorrow,_ she resolved, _tomorrow we will go find Stefan. Tomorrow the universe will be "normal" again, whatever that means. Tomorrow I will be a good girlfriend, a good sister, and a good high-school student. Tonight..._

"I missed you..." she confessed in a whisper, to herself as much as to him, and her lips were so close they brushed his skin as she spoke, "so... much." She rubbed her own cheek against his then, and smiled because he remained as motionless as a marble statue.

"Elena..." he hissed, tightening his hands on her hips.

"Damon," she replied, her voice steady and sure. She reached up to brush his tousled hair out of his face. He turned his head to meet her eyes, his own uncomprehending and brimming with lust, fangs threatening to emerge. She did not look away. He leaned towards her then, lips parting, as though drawn by some magnetic force against his will. Her heart started pounding in anticipation and her whole body was humming with desire. And then-

"Damon!" Alaric's voice was too-cheerful as he walked up and clapped the vampire on the shoulder with an open palm.

Elena felt completely disoriented, quickly looking away and trying to regain her composure. Damon growled low in his throat, meeting Alaric's eyes with menace and saying, "Not now, Ric. Not. Now."

Alaric looked wary, but his gaze didn't falter.

"Exactly, Damon," he said in a low voice filled with warning. "Not now. Or rather, not here. You know, here? At a school dance? Where you're supposed to be a chaperone? For all of these _high school_ students _?_ Like _Elena?_ "

Damon finally stood down from Alaric, registering what the other man was saying. He did not look happy about it, though.

 _Oh god_ , Elena thought, _what the hell are we doing?_

"Thanks, Ric," she stammered. "I forgot..."

He made a dismissive gesture. "You have a lot on your mind. I think it might be a really good idea if you two went home and talked about some of it. Maybe now-ish, from the look of things."

She blushed, mortified that he could see through her intentions so clearly. Damon looked at her with raised eyebrows, inquiring.

"Yeah," she agreed with Alaric, not wanting to meet his eyes. "Damon, will you please take me home?"

"Home to where?" Once again, his subtext was clear to her. He was giving her the chance to run away.

"Home to the boarding house. With you." She hoped that was the answer he wanted.

He gave her a hard, searching look. She stood her ground. Whatever can of worms she'd just opened, she was planning to deal with it tonight. It might be the only chance she ever had. After a moment Damon conceded.

"Let's go, then."

She told Alaric good-bye with as little awkwardness as she could muster, and they left the school at once. As Damon escorted her to his car with a hand on the small of her back, her heart continued to pound in her throat. What on Earth was she getting herself into? There was still time to undo this, she knew. She could go to bed and let him drink his scotch and when they woke she knew they'd never speak of that moment on the dance floor again, just like that ridiculous strip tease and all the other moments they never, ever mentioned.

_"It is much easier to live with the things we've done than the things we never did."_

"Damon, wait," Elena said, putting her hand over his as he went to unlock her car door.

"Wh-" he started to speak but was immediately silenced as she took his face between her hands and kissed him.


	11. One Night

As her lips met his Elena lost herself in the sensation, aware of nothing but the cool softness of his skin and the nearness of his body. Her heart was pounding and her mind, for once, was not racing but rather basking in the sweet simplicity of the moment.

 _Yes,_ she thought, _yes._

It felt right, it felt good. This is what she'd been aching for to the point of pain for the past six weeks, and the taste of him both slaked her desire and stoked it.

Damon's lips responded to hers as though he couldn't help it, but she noticed that he kept his arms close by his sides with an almost military stiffness. She pulled back slightly to meet his eyes and was distraught to see pain the the clear blue depths. Knitting her brow, she looked at him quizzically.

"God, Elena," he whispered hoarsely, "you're killin' me here."

That was not the reaction she'd been hoping for. She told him as much, suddenly feeling foolish and self conscious, and wrapped her arms around herself defensively.

"Don't get me wrong," he said, "God knows I've dreamed about having you kiss me of your own free will when I'm not on the verge of death... but... right now I haven't eaten in a few days, and my control isn't really where it should be. I'm in no mood for your teasing."

"I wasn't teasing," she replied in a small voice, hurt. This was so not what she'd wanted.

Damon stared at her for a long time with his most closed off and inscrutable expression, then sighed and said, "Let's go home."

He opened her door for her again, and, not knowing what else to do or say, she got in.

They drove in silence for a while, the first truly awkward silence in the history of their tempestuous friendship. Elena couldn't help but feel like she'd done something horribly wrong. But... wasn't this what he'd wanted? Didn't he want her to want him? Hadn't they almost kissed less than ten minutes ago on the dance floor at the prom? Had he only let that happen because he was hungry and distracted? By the time they pulled up outside the boarding house she was confused and miserable.

As they walked inside Damon spoke a single word, in a voice carefully picked clean of any emotion. The hollow sound of it made Elena feel ill.

"Why?"

 _Because "It is much easier to live with the things we've done than the things we never did,"_ she thought. _Because if you walked out of my life as nothing but a "what-if" I would want to die._

Aloud she said, "Because I wanted to."

He laughed cruelly.

"Lovely," he said in a too-cheerful voice, "So I guess we can check that off your to-do list."

"That's not how it was," she spat out, "and if I thought for one second you were going to be such a dick about it I never would have done it."

"Come now, Elena. Haven't we established I'm the big, bad, big brother? You can _always_ count on me to be a dick."

He smiled at her, and he wanted to cry because it was a cold, empty, cruel smile she hadn't seen in weeks. Why was he doing this? She looked away.

"You're upset with me," he observed as though the fact was mildly surprising.

"Forget it," she said dismissively and started to walk up the stairs to her room. He used his supernatural speed to run past her and block her way.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Princess. Next time you feel like using me as an emotional punching bag I'll just open my arms and be sure to welcome it."

"That isn't-"

"Next time you feel like being a naughty girl for a few minutes I'll be sure to be appropriately appreciative of whatever scraps you feel like throwing my way."

"Damon you don't-"

"Next time you feel like slaking your hormones just a little bit I'll be sure to-"

"SHUT UP!" she shouted, slamming both palms into his chest before stumbling back to put some distance between them. "I'm not fucking teasing you, Damon. I didn't kiss you to screw with your head, you idiot. I kissed you because I realized I'm in fucking love with you, though God knows I can't exactly remember why right now, you mean, petty fucking jerk."

The room felt deadly quiet in the wake of her outburst. Elena's heart and mind were racing. Why the hell had she just said that?

_Because it's true._

It couldn't be true. She was in love with Stefan, not Damon.

_"It's okay to love them both..."_

_No no no no no no no..._

But her whole being resonated with the truth of her declaration, even through her anger and frustration. She absolutely did love this man, with all of her heart and soul.

Damon, for his part, appeared to be completely in shock. He'd dropped his arrogant bastard act and stood before her now with a bewildered look on his handsome face.

"What?" he asked meekly, sounding like a lost child despite all his many years.

She should have known his coldness was just a defense mechanism, that he was terrified to let her see what he was really thinking or feeling. Elena's anger evaporated instantly as she was overwhelmed with tenderness and the pressing need to take that lost and lonely boy in his arms and show him how much he truly meant to her.

 _"It's too late to backtrack now,"_ she thought with a strange combination of relief and terror, " _you might as well be honest... with yourself as much as to him."_

"I said," she murmured, walking towards him again slowly, as one might approach a wounded animal, "I love you."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously in a near-whisper, wide-eyed, not moving a muscle, "Why now? What changed?"

She looked at him and met his eyes dead-on. This was a woman's decision; she would not blush like a little girl.

"I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow with Stefan. I don't even know if we'll both live through it. And you said you're leaving... If I never see you again..."

She stopped to swallow the painful lump in her throat.

"Even though I'm probably going to get in a world of trouble over it, if I let you walk out of my life without doing this I am absolutely certain I will regret it every day as long as I live."

His eyes started to fill with heat and desire as she spoke, but he still didn't move, so she went on.

"One night. Can't we just forget about the rest of the universe for one fucking night? It's not enough, I know it's not enough, but it's all we have. Please."

His stance relaxed almost imperceptibly.

"What about my brother?" he asked, still carefully guarded, obviously terrified to let her past his emotional defenses. "I thought it was always _Stefan,_ that it would always be _Stefan..._ "

Her stomach knotted as she thought of the younger Salvatore, lost and crazed and alone in the grip of a madman.

"I do love Stefan," she said honestly, "and I probably always will. Nothing has changed that. But I love you too. I've been trying not to, I think, but it's kind of hopeless. The thought of you leaving me makes me physically sick. I think about you almost constantly... I just... do. I love you. I love him. I can't help it. You must think I'm the most selfish bitch in the history of the world."

"Nah," he said with a teasing smile, "that title's been spoken for. But you look _just like her_."

She laughed aloud, overjoyed to hear the levity in his voice, and his eyes finally softened.

"So," he said, reaching out to run his fingertips over her jawline, "if I give you tonight, what happens tomorrow?"

She would not make promises she couldn't keep. She would not tell him pretty lies they were both too smart to believe. She met his eyes, basking in the growing heat of his gaze, and, with a coy smile, in her best southern drawl she quoted Scarlett O'Hara, saying, "I'll think about that tomorrow. After all, tomorrow is another day."

"It's not enough," he hissed, grabbing a fist-full of her hair and pulling her against his taught body.

"No," she agreed, holding his gaze even as she yielded to him, "but it's what we have."

* * *

 _One night_ , he thought , _so little time..._

But still, that was one night more than he'd ever expected. As he buried his hand in her hair he twisted it slowly, gripping hard enough to pull, and as she surrendered to him his desire, temporarily dampened by their difficult conversation, came surging back with a vengeance.

God, he loved this woman... this slip of a girl who wasn't scared of monsters, who constantly laid her life on the line for her friends and loved ones without question, who looked him in the eye and always told him the truth even when most people would lie... this strong, passionate, self-possessed woman, wise beyond her years, with the biggest heart he'd ever known and the ability to admit her mistakes.

 _This woman who loves you,_ he thought. _One night..._

Better make it count. If he had one night he fully intended to make it one neither of them would ever forget, and he wasn't going to do that dwelling on old emotional scars and pouting over things that could never be.

_That's not the Damon she loves._

She loved him...

He growled low in his throat, a quiet, predatory sound. Her eyes opened wider at the sound and he heard her heartbeat speed up ever-so-slightly. He twisted his hand in her hair and she whimpered, trembling with anticipation, desire, and perhaps the slightest touch of fear. Her reaction made him forget every trace of his emotional insecurities as he was flooded with lust and he could feel his cock hardening with arousal, trapped between their bodies. She could feel it too, he knew, and smiled darkly at her. Moving in slow motion he leaned forward, inch by inch, until he could feel the heat of her breath on his face. He saw her eyes flutter closed and watched her delicious lips part in anticipation of his kiss... and then he turned his head to the side, bypassing her mouth entirely and leaning in to whisper against her ear, "Upstairs. My room. Now." Then he released her hair, stepping back and looking her over. She looked disoriented and blinked a few times, swaying to steady herself on her feet and support her own weight.

"What?" she asked, and her voice was low and husky.

"My room. Go. Now. And you're wearing far too many clothes."

With that he sped off, vampire fast, to the basement and proceeded to drink an entire bag of blood. She was so tempting, he thought, and he didn't trust himself not to harm her without taking the edge off of his hunger. The blood was cold and unsatisfying, but it filled his, slaking the ache in his teeth and jaw and allowing him to focus more fully on his other hungers.

He walked into his bedroom to find Elena, eyes dark with passion, leaning against the foot of his bed. She'd discarded her magnificent dress and her shoes, and now stood before him in a bra, half slip, and pantyhose with the collar of rubies still glittering temptingly against her hot throat. Her hair was mussed from his hands, and her cheeks were flushed. She looked both innocent and wanton, both an angel and a succubus wearing the face he'd loved for over a century.

Funny, that. He never saw Katherine when he looked at her anymore. She was herself, not a carbon copy. If you looked closely enough they were as different as night and day... Elena was her own person. And she loved him.

"Hi," she whispered, in a voice bordering on shyness. She looked at the carpet. Oh, this was going to be fun.

"I thought," he purred in a voice that had melted far harder women than Elena, "I told you that you were wearing too many clothes."

Her eyes grew wide and she glanced down at her undergarments. Her bare arms were covered in goosebumps as she stammered, "I mean, I thought..."

"You don't have to think," he interrupted, slowly walking towards her. "Tonight you belong to me. I will think. You will listen." He traced a finger up her front, lingering between her breasts for a moment and noticing her hardened nipples straining against the fabric. "Right now, what I think is that you are wearing too many clothes."

With that he took hold of her slip and her stockings in one hand, raked slashes in them with his fingernails and tore them effortlessly away from her body with a flick of his wrist.

She gasped. He reached behind her and unhooked the scrap of fabric she called a bra, which fell away to reveal her smooth, velvety breasts with their dark nipples tightened into achingly hard little points.

Unable to resist, he slid his hands down to rest on her hips and leaned forward, taking first one breast and then the other in his mouth, biting softly at the nipples , dragging his fingernails gently over her flesh as her hands flew up of their own volition to tangle in his hair.

Her skin was so soft. He wanted to kiss it, stroke it, caress it... brutalize it, mark it, make it bleed. The smell of her arousal made his cock even harder, engorged to the point of pain in the prison of his slacks. He had to taste her, had to touch her and know how wet she was, how swollen and tight she was... for him.

Still kneeling, he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her panties and pulled down, leaving her naked in front of him. Her body tensed, he assumed with self-consciousness about her nudity. That wouldn't do. This woman, his woman, should never feel ashamed of her body. She should know how beautiful she was, should revel in it, should embrace her nakedness and sexuality. He clenched her hips firmly enough to make her gasp again, then leaned forward on his knees to lovingly kiss her vulva, flicking his tongue out to graze her clitoris as he did. She cried out and a fresh wave of dampness covered her thighs. She was so sensitive, he thought, this won't take long at all.

Then he got an idea.

He stood, raking his fingers over her ass and up her back as he did, leaning in to kiss her deeply with the salty, earthy taste of her arousal still on his lips. She moaned into his mouth and strained towards him, craving contact.

"Elena," he whispered, gripping her naked ass with one hand as the other came up to pinch a nipple and knead a breast, "how long has it been since you drank your vervain?"

She looked confused at the question, distracted by his touch.

"About a week," she confessed. "I know I should have... but... I wanted... I was hoping you would drink from me. I still wore my necklace...ah!"

She trailed off as he twisted her nipple hard.

"Your necklace?" he asked, "Where is it?" he fingered her throat, which was glittering with rubies, but had no trace of the silver chain that normally graced it.

Elena's eyes filled with fear for a moment and she tensed in his arms. He smiled wickedly, skimming his right hand down her flank to slip two fingers inside her hot, dripping core.

"I won't hurt you, Elena," he murmured close to her ear. "I'm going to make you feel good. So good. You want that, don't you?"

She whimpered.

"Don't you?" he repeated patiently.

"Yes..." she said and it came out as a breathy hiss as he rolled his thumb over her clitoris.

"I know. You're already about to come and I've barely touched you."

She looked into his eyes, her cheeks reddening at her own eagerness, her eyes black with desire. Damon had never seen anything so beautiful.

"You're going to come on my fingers at any moment now," he whispered, holding her gaze and twisting his hand. She cried out and her muscles fluttered around him. He looked deep into her eyes then, claiming her mind as he spoke.

"You may not," he compelled her.

"What?" she said, moaning with desire through her confusion.

"I said, he repeated, withdrawing his hand and pinching her outer lips with his fingers, "You may not come. You cannot have an orgasm tonight until I tell you to. No matter what."

Anger and arousal battled on her face as she realized what he was saying. Damon growled at the sight of her passion and he couldn't remember ever having wanted anything more in his life than he wanted this woman. His cock was weeping pre-come against the fly of his pants as she ground her pussy against his hand.

"You're evil," she groaned.

"And you love me," he said.

Then he grabbed her by the hips, threw her on her back on the bed, and the sight of her sprawling naked and flushed against the white feather comforter was the stuff of his dreams. He stared at her while he took off his own clothes, drinking in the hungry look on her face as he revealed every new inch of skin, and when he finally slid his pants over his hips and his rock-hard erection finally sprang free from its cage, God help him, she actually licked her lips. With a groan he dragged her to the edge of the bed, dropped to his knees, and buried his face in the hot wetness of her folds.

He licked, kissed, nipped, and moaned against her, holding her bucking hips still with one arm as he delved deep within her with two fingers from the other hand. It wasn't long before she was grinding against him with all her strength, whimpering and begging him to let her come. He ignored her pleas, though, stoking the fire within her to the point of pain, and it wasn't until her cries started to become tinged with desperation that he withdrew, looking at her wild, desire-filled eyes.

"Not yet," he said sweetly, kissing her thigh as he stood up and gazed down at her. "You haven't done anything to earn it, Princess. Why should I let you come now?"

Fast and graceful as a snake Elena was off the bed, kneeling before him. Staring him in the eye the entire time she took his chiseled hips in her delicate hands and leaned forward, dragging her hot tongue along the underside of his cock from root to tip.

He groaned against his will, and noticed a cheeky look of victory in her sex-drunk eyes as she took the base of his aching erection in her hand and took the tip of it into her mouth, rolling her tongue around the head. She proceeded to give him one of the most intense blow-jobs he'd ever had, and it wasn't long before he was having to control his own orgasm to prevent it from overtaking him.

He picked her up, stood her in front of him, and gathered her in his arms to kiss her with all the pent-up passion he was feeling.

"I love you," he said.

"I love you," she responded breathlessly, and his heart swelled.

"You're mine," he hissed, and her eyes flashed.

"Prove it," she challenged, and he growled at her.

He flung her on the bed again, this time crawling up after her, and, bracing himself on his forearms, plunged his leaking, aching, tortured member into her hot, slick, welcoming pussy. She cried out, burying his face against his shoulder as he entered her, her vaginal walls spasming around him.

"Oh god," she whispered. "Please, please..."

"Please what?" he asked, driving into her until he felt her cervical wall within her hot, wet, folds. His balls tightened at the heavenly feeling and he knew he wasn't going to last long.

"Please..." she was almost incoherent. "Please... I need... I need... it's too much..."

"You want to come, Princess?" he teased, "can't even wait for me?" He started stroking more quickly in and out of her and she made a desperate, strangled noise. She'd been poised on the edge of climax for ages now... he knew she was ready to explode from the pressure, tension, anticipation.

"I need... Please, Oh God, please... Damon..."

Her breath was coming in shallow gasps as he drove into her again... again... he wasn't being tender, he wasn't being gentle. They were both too far gone for that. He fucked her like his life depended on it, as though she were oxygen and he was a drowning man. She clenched and bucked against him, grinding helplessly and futilely towards an orgasm she couldn't achieve. He felt his own cheeks flush with exertion and felt her wrap her arms and legs around him, drawing him closer inside of her.

"God, Elena..." he moaned. He could feel the pressure of his own climax starting to roll through him. "Now... Come now. Come on my cock."

She screamed as she came, back arching, sweaty hair flying around her face. She dug her nails into his shoulders and he smelled his own blood... and as she started to relax back into the pillow he whispered, "Again," as he reached down and ran his fingers over her tortured clitoris. Her eyes opened wide as a second climax washed over her, slower, less violent, but certainly no less intense than the first. This time she moaned his name, and as her muscles clenched around him he thought he'd never heard anything so beautiful. This woman... she loved him. The thought was his undoing. With a groan he threw back his head and spilled himself inside of her, fangs bared, eyes closed, and muscles taut. For a moment the world went black, and as he came back to himself he saw her gazing up into his monstrous, vampiric face with satiated lust and adoration. Reaching up she drew his face down and kissed him, running her tongue along his deadly fangs and tangling her fingers in his hair again. He sighed in pleasure, brushed his lips against her mouth, then her jaw, and whispered, "again" one final time. She sobbed as she came a third time, shuddering against him as he kissed her face, her neck, her shoulders, her over-sensitized body exhausted from the exertion. As she laid back against the pillow he reluctantly withdrew from her, then took her in his arms and pulled her against him.

"Damon," she whispered... "that was..."

He silenced her with a kiss.

"I love you," she whispered, and curled up against him, allowing sleep to claim her.

Damon stayed awake for as long as he could, trying to commit this experience to memory in perfect detail.

 _One night..._ he thought, and clenched her tighter. _How can I give this up after only one night?_


	12. Beautiful Agony

Elena laid still for as long as she could upon waking. Last night was burned into her brain like a brand, as vivid as any fantasy she'd ever had, only more intense. She wanted to remember everything: the press of Damon's cool, toned body against her back, the weight of his arm draped around her midsection, the sensation of their naked legs wrapped around each other, every nuance, every detail. It couldn't last, though, and as the morning sun crept around the edges of the drapes she felt him stir, stating to come back to consciousness behind her.

She didn't feel guilty. The fact surprised her, a little. She was sure, after all, that Stefan was going to be furious, or worse, hurt and dejected. But after weeks of numbness, stress, worry, resisting temptation, and having insanely vivid nightmares about Jenna, Stefan, Jeremy, even her parents, she just couldn't make herself feel appropriately bad about spending a night of lovemaking and peaceful sleep in the arms of a man who loved her.

Not that she'd ever qualify what had passed between the two of them as "lovemaking." Stefan made love to her, worshiped her, made her feel like an angel fallen to Earth. Damon, on the other hand, displayed none of the lazy, slow affections of his younger brother. He'd flooded her five senses, fucked her until she couldn't see straight, consumed her like a starving man at a banquet. He made her feel like a _woman_.

She would have thought that being claimed so thoroughly would have turned her off, offended some feminist emotion deep within her. It was quite the opposite, though. His claim to her had been so complete, so all-consuming that she found herself growing warm and wet again just replaying the scene in her mind. Damon's love was terrifying in its intensity but addictive; she already craved more.

She shifted in his arms, rubbing her thighs together, and he tightened his arms around her.

"Five more minutes," he murmured.

She laughed.

"Time to wake up, Damon. It's morning!"

"No... 'Twas the nightingale, not the lark..."

"Romeo and Juliet?" she muttered and raised her eyebrows, "Seriously?"

"Too much?" he smirked and opened one eye to peer sleepily at her. She wrinkled her nose and nodded.

"I should have known you wouldn't appreciate my theatrical charms, you Philistine."

She poked him in the side and he retaliated by pinning her arms above her head, rolling her underneath him.

"I like your _charms_ just fine," she assured him, grinding her hips against his morning hard-on. "It's just that I can't listen to you talk like that without wondering how many other women you've pulled that line on before me."

"Not that many!" he insisted with wide, innocent eyes. Then he leaned close to whisper conspiratorially, "Usually I just compelled them to go back to sleep, or to blow me. Not nearly as charming, but much more efficient."

She sighed at the mention of compulsion, thinking of how his whispered commands had torn three orgasms from her body the night before. She should be livid at him for manipulating her so completely. She wasn't. She was just turned on. What the hell was wrong with her?

"Speaking of compulsion," he said, his eyes darkening as he watched her remember what he'd done to her, "Vervain tea for you this morning. What on Earth are you thinking, quitting your regimen like that?"

"I _wanted_ you to take my blood."

It had started off as simple carelessness, forgetting every now and then. Then more frequently. Slowly she realized her subconscious block against the tea had less to do with mere carelessness and everything to do with the insane lust she felt every time she thought about watching Damon feed off of Alaric.

"No go, princess," he said, "I won't feed on you like livestock."

"Livestock? That's what you think of the humans you feed from?"

"Mostly, yes," he said blithely. "The ones I don't see as whores. You're neither."

"Well if you won't feed on me, why won't you _share_ your blood with me?"

He looked at her wistfully for a split second before the lighthearted playfulness came back to his face. Then he smiled the smile she was coming to understand was always a mask put in place to hide his deeper emotions.

"Don't think that's a good idea, hon," he said slowly.

"Why not?" she asked, trying not to sound whiney.

"There is apparently a very strong psychic link involved in blood sharing," he explained. "I don't know how well I'd be able to protect you from the inside of my mind."

Elena couldn't help the hurt feeling that welled up inside of her. After all this, after all they'd been through, when they might die today, he was still unwilling to share himself with her?

"You don't trust me," she accused, starting to roll away from him only to find herself pinned on her back by hands ten times stronger than her own.

"God, you are so eighteen," he complained in a whisper, so close to her face their noses were almost touching. "Trust has nothing to do with this. I don't know if I can maintain any kind of mental shields during blood sharing because I've never done it. There are too many memories I have, fresh ones as well as old ones, that are nightmares I wouldn't wish on anyone, especially you."

A flash of something dark crossed his face as he spoke. Was Damon actually afraid? Elena's petulance faltered.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

He loosened his grip on her wrists and the dazzling smile he flashed her let her know "serious time" was officially over.

"Couldn't be better," he assured her. "I spent last night fulfilling one of my greatest fantasies. It's definitely a superior way to spend the night before a near-certain suicide mission, don't you think? Too bad that even if we somehow manage to survive to be heroes I _still_ won't get the girl."

An awkward silence stretched between them for a moment. Elena looked away.

"Let's not talk about that now," she whispered.

After last night the idea of losing Damon made her even sicker than before.

"Right," he agreed cheerfully. "Let's get a move on."

Elena reluctantly rolled out of bed and stretched her sleepy body before sauntering to the bathroom, hyper-aware of Damon's gaze on her naked form as she walked. Her thighs were sore from their exertions, not to mention places deeper within her. She relished the ache.

Walking into Damon's elegantly furnished bathroom she did a double-take at the sight of herself in the mirror. Naked from head to toe save for the heavy collar of rubies, hair tumbling free of its bobby pins and with yesterday's eye make-up holding on for dear life, she looked disheveled, wanton, like a slave girl from an ancient sultan's harem, or a succubus. The sight appealed to her-for a moment she could pretend she was something other than an over-stressed, grief-ridden teenager who hadn't even turned in one college application form this year.

 _He lets me be this woman,_ she thought, _this is what he does for me This is who I am to him._

She was finishing up brushing her teeth when Damon's reflection came up behind her own in the mirror. He hadn't even put on so much as a sock and stood behind her like the chiseled Greek god that he was, naked and on display for her eyes to drink up. Their eyes locked in the mirror and Damon reached out and pulled her against him before possessively snaking his arms around her. Elena sighed and leaned into his touch, wishing for the hundredth time that she could stay in this moment

"Time for a shower," she said reluctantly.

"Sure is," Damon agreed, but made no move to release her, instead leaning his head forward to lick her neck where the necklace touched her throat. She shivered and tilted her head at what she hoped was a provocative angle, trying to seduce him into feeding on her.

Damon smirked at her with a face that clearly said he was onto her, then pinched her nipple hard in silent reprimand. The sharp sensation made her gasp and she watched the color rise in her own cheeks in the mirror. Watching her own reactions to his touch was incredibly erotic and she soon found herself leaning back into him, craving his touch. She could feel his growing erection pressing into the small of her back, and she wanted to touch it, to taste it, to bury it inside of her. She rolled her hips against him and he growled in her ear.

"How about that shower?" she murmured, and was surprised at the huskiness in her own voice. "Wanna come help scrub my back?"

The next few minutes were a blur of hard muscles, hot water, steam, and cold bathroom tile. Elena felt drunk on pleasure as Damon picked her up, and as she wrapped her legs around him he lowered her slowly onto his cock. The tile wall was slick and cold behind her but after a few minutes it warmed up with the heat and friction of their bodies. Every thrust of their hips brought Elena euphoria and misery. She had never felt anything so intense as this connection she had with Damon... she wanted this forever.

As if reading her thoughts, Damon slammed his hips into her and growled, "You're _mine,"_ in a harsh whisper, causing her to cry out at the depth of his penetration. "Mine. I don't care if I never get to hold you, to kiss you, to fuck you ever again... You are mine. No amount of time or distance will ever take that away."

"Yours," she whispered, her voice shaky from all the rough handling and her impending orgasm, which had started to stoke its fire deep within her.

Holding her against the wall Damon continued to piston his hips into her, passion and desperation making him wild. Knowing she was no match for him physically Elena submitted completely to the impassioned assault and rode the waves of his emotions, his lust, and his misery until they mingled with her own and she could no longer think straight. This time he did not restrict her or deny her, and she felt the waves of her orgasm wash over her like a super nova. As her vaginal muscles clenched and spasmed she heard him growl his own climax, and the sight of his head thrown back under the cascading water from the shower was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. Tears brimmed over in her eyes and mingled with the sweat and the steam as she collapsed against him.

This was it, she thought, their last stolen moment. Now was the time for Stefan, Klaus, Katherine, death, murder... reality. So for one more minute she clung to this man who had claimed her so thoroughly for himself and she mourned the death of something beautiful that would never have the chance to live.

* * *

Later, on the plane, in her swanky first-class seat (Damon refused outright to fly coach) Elena pondered something he'd said to her earlier.

"What did you mean this morning when you said you had fresh memories as well as old ones that you didn't want me to see?"

He looked at her for a minute, then shook his head dismissively.

"Nothing, don't worry about it."

She would not relent, though, and as their plane flew south towards Mississippi eventually she pulled the grim story out of him. Apparently last week the southern vampires had given him the information he'd needed to find Stefan, but not without a price. He'd spent the four days before he returned to Mystic Falls locked in a basement, bled, and tortured just for their pleasure... long-overdue revenge for past wrongs Damon had committed against Stefan's friend. In the end, though, the man had kept his word and his debt to Stefan, if nothing else, had made him let Damon go with enough information to track him down.

"I'm not a nice man, Elena," Damon reminded her. "I did some awful things... I still do. I won't say I didn't deserve it, but I can say I don't want you to live through the past week vicariously through my memory. It wasn't pretty."

He sounded weary, and Elena's heart ached as he spoke. What Damon had undergone was clearly horrific. And all for Stefan... for her...

"You don't have to worry about hiding that stuff from me, Damon," she assured him quietly, reaching for his hand over their shared arm rest. But, perhaps for the first time ever, Damon drew his hand back, folding in on himself imperceptibly and turning to look out the window.

"Don't," he muttered.

"Damon, let me help you," she urged.

"No. Just leave me alone, please."

"Damon, I-"

"I said drop it," he said in an acidic tone. "I am not going to inflict my darkest secrets and most unpleasant burdens on an eighteen year old girl. You don't deserve that kind of pressure."

"It's not all bad, Damon, to share pain. It helps. I know, I've had a bit in my life. Besides, there are also all the happy things in our minds we could share... I want to help you."

"You're forgetting yourself, Princess. You are _not_ my girlfriend. You don't need to help me. This is _not_ in your job description. I can help myself."

In the rawness of his statement she heard the truth. He didn't want to share his pain and joy with someone who was going to leave... because even if he was the one who ran all the way to Monaco it was clearly she who was doing the leaving, in all the ways that mattered. Could she blame him? She stared at him helplessly and felt miserable again. Her love for him sat on her chest like a burning coal, beautiful but painful. How had they fallen so deep so fast?

Elena spent most of the time remaining in their flight in silence, lost in thought. What was she going to do? If she had it this bad for Damon, shouldn't she just break up with Stefan? On the surface it seemed reasonable, but her stomach lurched at the thought. She thought back to a day less than two months before when he'd spent hours trying to help reconcile her to becoming a vampire, an unwanted scenario forced on her by a crazed Damon unable to cope with the idea of her death. The purity of Stefan's love, the depth of his devotion to her, was the stuff of fairy tales. She'd sooner throw a brick through a stained glass window than throw that away.

She wished desperately for her mom, for Jenna, for any woman she could turn to for guidance. She didn't know what to do...

As they disembarked the plane she resolved to put it out of her mind until Stefan was safe.

 _We're in survival mode_ , she thought to herself. _Step one is to manage all the life threatening situations, step two is to wallow in self-pity and indecision. You cannot do both at once._

"You ready for this?" Damon asked her as he tossed their bags into their rental car. If his information was correct they were headed straight into the lion's den (the wolf's den?), to the hotel where Klaus and Stefan were apparently staying this week.

"Absolutely not," Elena said, "but let's go."

"That's the spirit!" he said cheerfully, and with that they were off on the last and most dangerous leg of their journey.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note: there is a reference to sexual assault in this scene. Nothing happens 'on-screen,' and it does not involve Elena or Damon, but if that is a sensitive issue for you please be warned.

They stood in the fashionably dim, plushly carpeted hotel hallway and Damon could hear Elena's heart in her throat. She was absolutely terrified, he knew, but all that showed on her face was grim determination.

She hadn't spoken much since he'd forced her to eat lunch earlier. He didn't care about that; at this point having her angry at him was easier, less distracting than the warmth of her love and the sensuality he'd been basking in for the past day and a half.

He did feel sorry for how he'd disturbed her, though, when he'd stopped at a local blood bank and came out with an extra-large ice chest full of AB positive (which was the type no one noticed he always made a point of taking, since the smallest percentage of people could use it).

"What on Earth?" she'd asked incredulously. "How long do you expect to be gone?"

"This isn't for me," he'd replied matter-of-factly. "I'd rather have too much than not enough to keep him under control until we get home."

At the horrified look on her face he immediately regretted the bluntness of his words. Clearly she hadn't mentally processed the realities of what it meant that Stefan would be in dire need of rehabilitation after they found him.

 _If we can even fix him at all when he's been this far gone for so long,_ Damon thought, but this time his treacherous mouth stayed shut.

He'd reached out to her then, aching to wipe away the pain on her face and was chagrined when she pulled away from his touch.

 _Our time is over,_ he thought sadly. And so he swallowed the lump in his throat and started to rebuild his emotional defenses... the ones he'd spent decades building up only for one spirited young woman to blow them down like a house of cards. It was not a painless process. Shoving her away now was so much harder than it had been to keep her at an arm's distance in the first place... before there had been desire, lust, and loneliness, but now he _knew_ what he'd be missing.

Sitting on the edge of his hotel bed he'd drained a blood bag and helped himself to a couple of the single-serving bottles of liquor in the mini-bar. He was sitting deep in thought (sulking was such an ugly word) when Elena walked in from the sitting room and looked at him for a moment before running a hand through her silky hair and asking, "are you sure it's a good idea to be drinking before we do this thing?"

Annoyed that she'd come in to tempt him with the smell of her shampoo, he looked up and glared at her saying, "I think I know my limits, Mother."

She opened her mouth angrily as though to retaliate, then closed it, pursed her lips, balled up her fists and stalked out of the room.

 _Good,_ he thought. It was much harder to deal with the idea of losing her when he was pretending like he _had_ her. This was better, really. She needed to get used to "normal" Damon again eventually, and remember that "normal" Damon is an asshole who doesn't give a shit about her feelings. "Eventually" might as well be now.

_Right._

That was hours ago. Now, with all their own posessions and Damon's massive supply of blood (except for the two bags stashed in Elena's purse) safely stowed away in their own room ten floors down, they stood outside the penthouse shite, hesitating to knock, waiting for the right moment.

 _Though,_ Damon thought in the reasonable part of his brain, _it would have been better not to wait at all. If they think about this hallway even for a split second they'll sense someone is out here._

"Ready when you are," he told her and she nodded her assent, not meeting his eyes. Her withdrawn attitude made him ache.

 _It's for the best_ , he told himself, and then took out his anger on the door in front of him, kicking it in with the full force of his strength.

Everything happened in a blur. The door fell in to reveal Katherine, naked and slumped over, tied to a chair and with a sickly grey pallor to her olive complexion. Starved, he assessed immediately, and tortured. He hoped Elena didn't notice the scrapes and scratches on Katherine's inner thighs. The type of abuse they suggested was disturbing and their lack of healing meant she must have not eaten in weeks, if not longer. Her head snapped up and her glassy eyes opened and he could see her nostrils flare at the scent of Elena.

_Well that certainly will not do._

Damon reached into Elena's purse and grabbed one of the blood bags he'd put inside for Stefan. Tearing it open with his teeth he walked briskly to Katherine and pressed it against her mouth. The whole thing was gone in a matter of seconds as she guzzled it down with no regard for the fact that it was spilling down her chin and chest. After she was done she licked hungrily at her lips and shoulder where it had drizzled. To see the normally fastidious Katherine guzzling blood like a wild animal...

 _Christ_...

He looked up and down her body, trying to assess the damage she'd endured, but she snarled, face contorted and fangs extended and jerked her bloody chin towards the bathroom.

"Not safe," she whispered hoarsely, "leave now. Get out."

"Oh, Katarina," purred Klaus' silky feline voice as he sauntered into the room, "They needn't go so soon. They only just arrived!"

Damon looked up from Katherine's (now-healing) wounds and met the devil's eyes. There was so much power, so much arrogance and pride. Klaus truly believed he was invincible... a god. Despite his best efforts to control himself, Damon felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach and his predatory prowess yielded entirely to the all-consuming urge to RUN THE FUCK AWAY.

"Oh, there's nowhere to run, Damon," Klaus purred, almost as though he could read Damon's thoughts. "Have a seat, my boy, and stay put."

Compelled by an original Damon had no choice but to obey. Though he didn't want to move, his legs moved of their own volition and he found himself seated opposite Katherine on a scotch-guarded velour sofa.

Elena glanced quickly from Klaus to Damon as this was happening, and scurried over to Katherine, starting to release the rough, scratchy ropes that bound her wrists to the chair.

 _Those ropes are extra-cruel,_ Damon thought, _The rope fibers are thick enough that they'll feel like wooden splinters against vampire skin. Tiny wooden needles... torture-licious._

Shaking off that thought he regarded the doppelgangers side by side for the first time in ages. The comparison between them was eerie. Day and night, life and death, Elena the vibrant avenging angel releasing Katherine who at this point seemed more zombie than vampire, with none of her trademark spirit or haughtiness anywhere to be found, his past love and his present...identical and opposite... and Damon realized suddenly that he was scared for them both.

Katherine was broken. Her past had finally caught up with her and the pain she'd clearly been enduring since he'd last seen her was enough to move even his own bitter and calloused heart. She looked like she'd welcome death, and the sight was as tragic as seeing a sickly tiger trapped behind the iron bars of a circus cage.

 _Tigers in captivity are still wild animals though_ , he thought, and as if on cue Katherine growled as Elena bent near her.

Damon gasped. If the bitch lost control and killed her human twin so help him...

Klaus watched the two women as though he was watching a particularly dramatic soap opera on TV.

Elena looked warily at him as she untied one of Katherine's wrists and, fishing in her purse she retrieved the other blood bag, handing it to the vampire woman and saying, "Hey, don't eat me. I'm trying to help you."

"You're going to die," Katherine croaked. "You two should have flown the coop and lived happily ever after weeks ago."

"Come on now," Elena said gently, with a touch of humor in her voice, "You of all people should know I couldn't leave one of them behind. And I don't plan to die today."

Then the two women shared a private moment that Damon couldn't see from where he was trapped. Two pairs of identical brown eyes glittered and Katherine tore into the blood bag with gusto. By the time she was finished her skin was starting to look more lifelike and less papery. Elena reached for the last rope.

"Not so fast there," Klaus said, bored with Elena's rescue attempt and Katherine's lack of attacking her. "Katarina, bonds or no you will not leave that chair."

It was a testament to how broken her spirit was that she didn't even react to the compulsion, just accepted it with a heavy nod of her head and let dull misery wash over her eyes once again, even after Elena finished untying her.

"Elena," Damon hissed, wondering what she was waiting for. She had the power to take Klaus out. Why wouldn't she use it?

Elena looked over and met his eyes then shook her head very discreetly. Clearly she had a plan, which he found less than comforting because most of Elena's plans ended in everyone being alive and well _except Elena._

Klaus reached out and grabbed her by the wrist, jerking her towards him like a rag doll. She didn't even try to resist. Damon wanted to fight, to kill, to run and hide... but he'd been told to sit and so he sat like a fucking dog and watched in horror as Klaus tore away her shirt and ran his hands up her throat.

"I do have to say, my dear, in all my years on this Earth you're the only human I've ever had the chance to kill twice."

Elena, to her credit, did not flinch. She just stared ahead of her and refused to react. Damon tried to catch her eye but she wouldn't even look at him, and he wondered irrationally if it was possible to die from feeling powerless.

Klaus was continuing, "But as delightful as it was the first time, I feel liek surely I should let someone else have a chance to experience it. I wouldn't want to be greedy, after all. Stefan, dear, why don't you come out now?"

That got a reaction. Damon heard Elena's quick intake of air as his baby brother emerged from the bedroom and his heart finished breaking.

_She has him back now. I don't stand a chance. Never did._

A tiny piece of him, he realized, had been hoping Stefan wouldn't be alive, that he could get all the credit for a rescue attempt without losing the girl.

 _You're a truly horrible person,_ he scolded himself with self loathing. But that thought only lasted until he met Stefan's gaze.

"Yes, Klaus?" Stefan asked, glancing at Elena with cold, uncomprehending eyes. Then he looked at Damon, and Damon realized that his baby brother, the king martyr, had actually shut off his emotions. He suddenly felt cold.

"Look what I found," Klaus said brightly, indicating Elena in front of him. "She's just like Katarina, your very favorite toy," he crooned, "only even better. Because this one is edible."

As if to demonstrate he lowered his head and bit, tearing her flesh unnecessarily as he did so. Elena screamed, and Damon let loose an involuntary protective and threatening growl, which made Klaus laugh.

Something foreign glinted in Stefan's eyes and his nostrils flared at the scent of Elena's blood. Damon knew true terror in that moment as he realized Stefan was going to murder Elena. Here. Now. While he was trapped and forced to watch. Even Katherine looked disturbed.

Elena was trembling but he couldn't tell whether it was out of pain or rage or fear.

"Well," Klaus said impatiently, "what are you waiting for? Come, boy, take your pleasure and eat your fill. This little lady is all for you."

Stefan stalked towards her so ruthlessly Damon wondered if the brother he knew was left anywhere inside this monster. Clearly Elena was thinking something similar, because he heard the thread of uncertainty in her voice as she spun in the circle of Klaus' arms and said, very quietly, "No, Klaus. Make him stop."

Klaus seemed slightly surprised at the sound of his own words as he looked at Stefan and said, "Wait, Stop, Stefan. No."

Damon's heart sang with relief as his brother's steps slowed. She'd been foolhardy to wait so long but now, with Klaus' mouth dripping her blood so freshly ingested there was no chance he'd be able to resist her. Her confidence was growing as she continued to hold his eyes and say, "Now let me go."

His arms dropped to his sides. He looked confused. Katherine made a sound of impressed disbelief.

"Now listen to me and listen well," Elena said, and her voice was icy cold enough that he could almost believe she was Katherine. "I can't kill you, motherfucker, but I can make you wish you were dead."

Klaus looked at her with incredulous eyes. "What have you done? What are you doing?" he asked, bewildered.

"Sucks, doesn't it?" she said by way of response, "Being compelled? Having no free will? Being at my mercy?"

Klaus' eyes began to widen. Katherine looked at Damon inquisitively, but he just smiled. Elena was going on.

"Let me tell you what my whim is, you cruel, psychotic monster, since you're _my_ puppet now. In a few minutes I'm going to snap my fingers. When I do, you are going to forget _everything_. You are going to forget Stefan, Damon, Elena," she paused and took a breath, "and Katherine ever existed. You're going to forget Mystic Falls is even on the map. You're going to forget everything about who you are. Everything except that you are now a monster...and a very long time ago you used to be human."

"You can't do this, you idiot girl child," Klaus said, faking bravado, but Damon could hear the taste of nervousness in his tone.

"I can't come back from the dead either," she countered, "but I seem to be doing okay there." She smiled and it was cruel and cold. "You've ruined all the lives you're going to ruin, you God damned psycho. You murdered Jenna... and so the next time I snap these idiot girl child's fingers you're going to realize that the smell, the taste, even the sight of human blood makes you sick. You'll never want to touch another human again. In fact, you don't even want to be AROUND them. You're going to go hide in the woods of Mississippi with the rest of the mosquitos, and you'll stay there because you want to. You'll live like a king, forever, on the blood of bunnies and alligators."

"You can't do that," he said flatly, and reached out as though to strike her.

"Stop," she commanded, and his hand froze mid-air.

That was when Klaus actually started to look afraid, and that was the moment that Damon started to let himself hope that they would actually make it out alive.

"Now... release them from their compulsion."

"Stefan, Damon, Katherine..." Klaus said in a miserable, hollow tone, "I release you from your compulsion."

For Damon the next moment appeared to pass in slow motion as several things happened simultaneously.

Klaus' eyes flashed with malice as he spoke, focusing his gaze on Stefan. The look made Damon leap to his feet as soon as he was able. Elena snapped her fingers and Klaus' evil sneer faded into a blank look of wariness and confusion.

Katherine shouted, "Stefan, NO!" and reached for the younger Salvatore, but in her weakened state she wasn't fast enough to catch him as he lunged for Elena, the look of the hunt eclipsing any shred of humanity on his chiseled features. He was going to kill Elena. His predatory gaze was focused on the sweet expanse of olive skin that peeked out from her torn cardigan.

Damon didn't think, he acted, finding his feet in motion and running towards her before he consciously acknowledged that he needed to, flinging himself in front of her in desperation.

He heard Elena scream and sob as he fell to the ground, he heard Stefan snarl and growl, and he heard Katherine shout his name, but he couldn't figure out what had happened until he smelled his own blood and saw Stefan's mouth streaked in crimson.

"Don't kill her, dude," he croaked out hoarsely. "If you do, whenever you sober up and realize what happened you'll be insufferably depressing for the rest of eternity."

Stefan kicked him to shut him up, which made both women cry out again. He blinked repeatedly as his vision blurred. This was not a good sign. Massive blood loss was such a bitch to come back from, and Stefan would probably stake him before he was aware of what he was doing...

"Get out, Elena." he whispered... or maybe he thought it. He wasn't sure. Either way, it was the last thought he had as his consciousness slipped away along with the warm, sticky blood that was pooling around him.


	14. Desperation

As Damon lost consciousness the last shreds of Elena's sanity vanished. She could still feel Klaus' teeth in her neck, she actually felt sorry for Katherine, her sweet Stefan was trying to eat her and her body was literally shaking with adrenaline, and yet when Damon's body hit the ground she couldn't think of anything but that. She was only just dimly aware of Klaus fleeing the room, presumably to carry out the requirements of her compulsion over him, but she didn't even really care that Bonnie's spell had worked because Damon was on the ground. Stefan had hurt him.

"Hey!" Katherine said, startling her out of her reverie.

Stefan had stopped in his tracks, looking confused, but was now back to stalking slowly in her direction. Elena started to panic as he stepped towards her, then Katherine made a gesture that she translated to mean, "hold on a second," and stumbled unsteadily out of the room.

Elena wasn't confident she'd come back... she sure didn't have the greatest track record with that, but she had no other plan so she simply stood and waited, watching Damon's blood pool around his lifeless body and tried to hold back sobs of hysteria as the monster who wore her boyfriend's face stalked towards her like a jaguar.

"Don't," she begged, and cursed the shakiness of her voice.

"Why not?" he asked with a mild, amused tone that sounded too much like Katherine and Klaus.

Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Because you're the kindest, gentlest soul I know. Because you love me. Because you don't want to be this person. Because I have been working for weeks to bring you home to me and get you your free will back, and this shouldn't be what you do with it. B..because I could compel Klaus after he drank my blood, and if you drink mine you'll be under my spell too."

She stared into those sweet, familiar chocolatey eyes and begged him to believe her bluff. Was her Stefan even in there? He stood for a moment and considered what she'd said, and she nearly wept with relief as Katherine finally came back into the room, wearing a man's button down shirt like a dress, a coffee mug in hand. She walked up to Stefan and held it out.

"Drink," she said, "Gimlet. Extra-strong. I'll prepare her for you... the way you like."

Stefan looked at her coldly and said, "You think you can save yourself by kissing my ass?"

"Maybe," she replied in a purr, and Elena's tears threatened to spill both because she didn't trust Katherine and because she couldn't believe how Stefan was talking, how cruel he sounded.

Stefan smirked and took the glass.

"It won't work," he said and knocked back the drink.

Then Elena watched as he coughed and sputtered, hissing and gagging.

Vervain, she thought, and met Katherine's eyes in gratitude. As Stefan fell, Katherine kicked him just like he'd kicked Damon, saying, "Looks like it worked to me, you dick. You're the only fucking vampire I prefer ON the wagon."

Then she picked him up with her inhuman strength and asked, "Room number?"

"What?" Elena asked, dumbfounded. Katherine rolled her eyes. "What is your room? I assume you have supplies to restrain him up there. You have to help that one," she gestured at Damon, "while this one and I have a... talk."

Elena looked down at Damon and whispered, "help him how?"

Katherine laughed. "You'll figure it out, honey, it isn't rocket science."

Elena blinked. It made sense. Katherine needed access to the restraints they'd brought for Stefan, and since Elena was nowhere near as strong as her doppelganger there was no way they could move both brothers without being noticed by the hotel staff. She threw Katherine the keys and told her the room number, and Katherine nodded, making for the door with Stefan across her shoulders like a sack of potatoes.

"Katherine?" she called out.

"Yeah?"

"My suitcase is the blue one. Please help yourself to my clothes."

A look suspiciously like gratitude crossed the vampire's face.

"God help me, subject to your fashion sense," she muttered with a crooked smile, and walked out.

As they left Elena considered the mess in front of her. Falling to her knees she looked at his paper white skin and the horrifyingly enormous puddle of dark red blood as it pooled around him. There was only one way to even attempt to bring him back, and Katherine couldn't help with that.

Blood.

Reaching down into her purse she pulled out a pocket knife and slashed at her own wrist, gasping and feeling nauseated as she watched the crimson flow roll down her arm. Blinking back tears of pain and grief she set her jaw and lowered her arm to his lips, whispering, "Please, please, please drink. Let him be okay. Let him be okay."

He laid there, unresponsive, her blood coating his lips and neck like garish makeup as his perfect blue eyes refused to open. For the first time she truly feared that she would lose him, that his vampire strength and resilience would finally fail him, and her stomach sank, propelling her two months back in time to the last time she'd been faced with his death. So much had changed since then... Before his death would have been heartbreaking but now... knowing all she'd learned... she didn't think she'd ever be able to come back from that.

She pictured Alaric walking around with ghosts in his eyes, trying to hold it together for Jeremy, and she saw his failure in the glass bottom of every empty liquor bottle in the Gilbert house. He'd lost Isobel and then Jenna and she could see how broken he was. Could she, a teenage girl, recover from something that had broken someone as strong and practical as Alaric? She thought of the Lockwood family and Mrs. Lockwood's desperate eyes, trying to struggle on without a husband as her son slipped away from her slowly because of the secrets he himself had to keep from the world. Elena thought of Stefan, of the cold, soulless look in his eyes as his blood-lust tried threatened to make him murder the only girl he'd loved in over a century. He'd sacrificed himself as surely as if he'd died in order to save Damon... Damon who laid here now at her feet, a drained corpse without a pulse or breath. Could she handle losing one, if not both, of these brothers forever?

"No," Elena growled. "NO!" and she clenched her fist hard to make the blood flow faster, holding Damon's mouth open and begging him silently to drink.

The blood flowed from her wrist and oozed sluggishly from the gash at her throat. She tried not to think about how queasy the sight was making her feel, tried not to concentrate on how unsafe she was being. Her only thought, plea, prayer was that this man on the floor come back to her. Time stretched out to eternity as she watched the dark crimson flow stain his mouth and cheeks. She started to panic... to despair... and then she saw his lips twitch.

"Yes!" she gasped. "Please! Damon, please! Please don't leave me." _Ever,_ she added silently, driven to honesty by the desperation of her situation. _Don't leave me. Don't die now, don't go to Europe, just don't leave. I love you. I need you. Don't go._

And then her faithful Lancelot answered her prayers as she felt his lips move of their own accord to brush against the life-giving flow from her arm.

The first sip he took from her veins burned like fire. Necessity stole his finesse and she remembered for a brief second the suffocating agony of Klaus draining her dry. But the joy she felt at his responsiveness eclipsed her pain. He drank. He swallowed. She felt like she could breathe again. She started to feel a bit lightheaded, but whether it was from relief or blood loss she couldn't have said. It wasn't until he opened his gorgeous eyes, however that the last of her panic faded and washed away in an azure sea. She started to cry.

"Elena?" he asked in a groggy voice, distorted by his extended fangs, "what are you doing?"

"You're alive," she whispered by way of a response, "drink."

And for a few minutes, he did. He drank deeply until the ache of blood loss started to overwhelm her and she couldn't help but make a small, choked sound in the back of her throat.

At the soft noise Damon pulled up his head and turned his eyes to her face, several shades darker than normal and saturated with lust and hunger. The color contrasted sharply with the scarlet stain on his lips. Elena reeled with dizziness, all of a sudden. Between Klaus and Damon she'd lost too much blood, and she was starting to feel faint.

"Oh my god," Damon gasped, looking at her wounds and realizing what she'd done. "Elena, you idiot, what the hell are you thinking?"

"Had to..." she muttered and heard her voice slur as the world tipped and spun around her. "Can't lose you... can't..."

Suddenly her head felt too heavy and she leaned forward just for a second, just to wait for the room to stop spinning.

"Dammit, Elena!" Damon said, "Why the fuck can't I ever trust you not to kill yourself?" And with that he hauled himself to a sitting position and gathered her against his wet, bloody chest.

Too tired and dizzy to protest his words she concentrated solely on the strong, solid feel of his body, the faint warmth beneath his skin that she knew came from her. Then she saw her own knife, the one she'd used to cut her wrist, in his hand and watched him draw it across his own skin, at the base of his throat.

"Drink, Princess," he ordered her in as stern a voice as he could muster. "If you die here in this hotel room I will never, never fucking forgive you."

She met his eyes and tried to glare, though she wasn't sure she succeeded.

"You've lost too much blood," she argued. "You can't feed me now. You still need more."

He rolled his eyes and shook her, which made her stomach lurch.

"Well isn't that just the god-damned pot calling the kettle a fucking martyr," he snapped. "Drink!"

She met his eyes, came to a decision, and then held her own wrist up again.

"Together," she said, "or I won't."

"Elena, I'm a vampire. I'm going to be fine. I just need a half hour and some blood from a bag. You are about to die, girl."

She shook her head, struggling for her thoughts. "I've almost lost you... too many times. No more. I want this. Now."

He glared at her in silence for a moment.

"You're blackmailing me into sharing blood."

"Learned from the best."

"And what if I don't consent to this? Do you know how sexual it is? This is like date rape."

"You can have me arrested... tomorrow," she murmured, growing dizzier as she shivered with cold, "But right now... your neck... is healing over. What do you say?"

"I hate you," he said, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips.

"You're a liar," she whispered, lowering her own lips to his throat.

And then... everything stopped. The pain, the dizziness, the nausea all faded into the background as though someone had turned a knob or a valve and shut it off. For a minute there was blessed nothingness... quiet... peace... and then, slowly, the nothingness was eclipsed by a seductive, glowing, irresistible pull of warmth and light.

Damon... somehow she was certain of it, that warm, glowing pull was Damon... his spirit, his soul. Something within her yearned to be closer to that, stretched out towards it, craved it like oxygen...

And then she touched it.

The inside of Damon's mind brushed against hers and she was bombarded by a kaleidoscope of images, thoughts, memories.

She saw flashes of his human childhood, running through the woods of Virginia during a time she'd never known.

She felt his trepidation at being called to serve in the Confederate army, his jaw set with resolve to do the honorable thing for his family despite being so, so young and scared to go to war. She felt his disgust, his horror at the things he'd done and seen in the trenches, she felt his anguish as he watched his friends and neighbors fall dead or broken on the dirty, burning ground. She knew his shame at the pangs of relief he felt every time he wasn't the one dying.

She saw his home through his own eyes when he returned, alive and whole, and embraced his mother and father when he'd been certain he'd never see them again, and felt his jealousy at the free-spirited glow in Stefan's eyes, a lightheartedness he knew he'd never again possess.

She saw Katherine Pierce as he'd first known her, when he'd been convinced she was God's answer to balance all the evil and ugliness he'd seen in the world. She watched as Katherine drank up his innocence, seduced him into the night and caused him to renounce his family and turn against his own brother... she felt him die.

She watched him struggle with his nature, she watched him cave to it, run from it, never able to outrun it. She watched him give up over the decades and, eventually, wearily embrace eternity as a damned, unlovable monster. She watched him murder, torture, seduce, massacre. She felt him convince himself he didn't care about anyone or anything... almost.

She felt his abject betrayal when he learned that Katherine, the light of his existence, was not locked away in that dreary tomb. She felt his inner turmoil at every sight of a human girl who reminded him so completely of her.

She saw herself then, through his eyes, an immovable, passionate spirit in a body as fragile and precious as Venetian glass. Curious, she lingered on those images.

In one he was begging her forgiveness... wracked with guilt over his loss of control and assault on Jeremy.

 _"You have every right to hate me. I understand. But you hated me before and we became friends. It would suck if that was gone forever. So, is it? Have I lost you forever?"_ He hadn't realized how important she'd become to him, how much he'd missed having a friend, and so he waited for her benediction, her curse... anything...

 _"Thank you for the book, Damon,"_ was her only reply, and so he languished at the mercy of her teenage caprices, her temper... her fear... and he truly believed he deserved nothing better.

She saw another moment as he talked on her doorstep to another woman wearing her face.

 _"Stop. I already know your question and its answer,"_ Katherine drawled as she gazed at him with a sultriness Elena could never master. _"The truth is I've never loved you. It was always Stefan."_

Elena's heart swelled with anger at Katherine's cruel words, until that anger was eclipsed by the horrifying realization that she'd said almost the exact same thing to him, once. And because she was looking into his soul she knew how deeply both of their words had sliced, and how despite his bravado, his cockiness, the strut in his step, he legitimately believed he deserved every jab. He believed he was a monster.

She saw Stefan through his brother's eyes, a hypocritical martyr trying to atone for a dozen lifetimes worth of crimes that would make the Marquis de Sade blush, a lucky sap who happened to stumble home to Mystic Falls a few days earlier than his brother and into the arms of an angel.

 _"Promise me,"_ Stefan was saying, impassioned, _"whatever happens, you'll protect her."_  
 _"Promise."_ The vow was absolute. Damon didn't care about his life, didn't care about what people thought of him, didn't even care whether she hated him or not as long as she was safe from all harm... and she sensed his anguish because he felt like he was incapable of keeping that promise as she stubbornly wrestled herself into life-threatening situation after life-threatening situation... and all for two idiot vampire brothers who both believed they were hopelessly damned. Didn't she even know the value of her own life, of her own soul?

She saw Damon on a dark road, wild eyed, unhinged, standing next to a pretty young girl who trembled in fear even as she stood caught in his compulsion.

 _"Jessica, I have a secret,"_ he said and his voice trembled with pain. _"I have a big one, and I've never said it out loud. I mean, what's the point? It's not going to change anything. It's not going to make me good... make me adopt a puppy... I can't be what other people want me to be. What **she** wants me to be. This is who I am, Jessica."_

 _"Are you going to hurt me?"_ the girl whimpered, but Elena was deaf to her suffering as she drowned in the ocean of Damon's self-loathing and misery.

 _"I'm not sure,"_ he replied seriously. _"Because you are my existential crisis. Do I kill you? Do I not kill you?"_

 _"Please don't,"_ she pleaded.

Elena felt his turmoil, his longing to let her go... his inability to make himself do it. If he let her go, he'd be admitting that he cared. And if he started to care... how could he ever atone for the horrible things he'd done, and would inevitably continue to do?

_"But I have to, Jessica. Because I'm not human and I miss it. I miss it more than anything in the world. That is my secret. But there is only so much hurt a man can take."_

Elena didn't even hear the girl as she sniveled, _"Please don't..."_ All she felt was the sick thrill of his hunting instinct as Damon let her run only to immediately pounce like a cat on a tortured mouse, the blood lust as it blacked out his emotions, and a new layer of self-loathing as he came back to himself and hid her body.

And while she was still reeling from that, from the guilt and agony in Damon's psyche, her mind plucked another moment from his, one they had shared... one she didn't remember at all.

 _"I just have to say something,"_ he muttered, dangling her chain in front of her.

 _"Why do you have to say it with my necklace?"_ He both regretted and admired the mistrust in her eyes. At the time the vervain-filled necklace had been her only defense against the undead, and she was right to be wary. It still hurt, though.

 _"W... well because what I'm about to say is probably the most selfish thing I've ever said in my life."_ the honesty of what he was saying took all the air out of him. He willed her to understand his sincerity, prayed she would hear him out.

 _"Damon, don't go there."_ Elena could see in her own eyes that she had some inkling of what he was about to say. Why couldn't she remember this night?

 _"I just have to say it once... you just need to hear it..."_ He walked towards her slowly, heart heavy as she backed up in fear. _"I love you Elena... and it's because I love you that I can't be selfish with you... why you can't know this."_ His voice went dry and gravelly as he fought back tears. "I don't deserve you... but my brother does. " He gave her forehead the most tender kiss she'd ever seen as he thought of Stefan, who fought the darkest parts of himself daily for the mere hope of ever being able to deserve something this beautiful. " _God, I wish you didn't have to forget this..."_ As she watched through his eyes he stroked her face as though she was the most valuable thing he'd ever seen, and she felt him form his intention to compel her.

Then she was spinning out of control, swirling endlessly in the depth and intensity of his emotions.

 _He loves me..._ she thought, dumbfounded, _so much... It's not possible that anyone could ever love me this much. I've never done anything to deserve this... But he just does. He's surrendered his entire broken, crushed and aching soul over to me and he won't tell me how much it means to him that I accept it because he's afraid I won't want him... that it will_ always be Stefan _... that he could never make me happy anyway... and so he's leaving..._

And then Elena did the only thing she could possibly do in the face of such openness and sincerity... she answered helplessly in kind, opening the floodgates of her own psyche and her own emotions to him, showing him everything that she was, letting him see every dark corner, every unkind thought, and every fear... begging him to understand the conflict within her as she stood trapped between two brothers who both desperately needed her, and whose love she cherished more than anything in the world.

 _This is me,_ she thought at him, _I'm not nearly as perfect as you think I am, but if you want me, I'm yours._

The answering surge of emotion was so powerful she gasped out loud, remembering with a jarring jolt that she had a physical body when her lips pulled away from Damon's skin.

Brown eyes locked on blue as he pulled her hand away from his face, and they sat staring for a minute, out of breath and gasping, mouths covered in blood, careening through emotions and thoughts faster than humans were meant to process them and on fire from the rawness of the intimacy they had just shared.

Then, moving as if they shared one mind (and maybe they did), they lunged for each other. Damon plundered Elena's mouth and she tasted her own metallic blood, different somehow than the dark, intoxicating flavor of Damon's own. She felt him rip at her clothes, which had suddenly become overwhelmingly constrictive to her skin, and she crawled into his lap, gripping his hair hard enough to tear it as she tumbled him onto his back and crawled on top of him, popping the buttons on his shirt and pulling and tugging at his jeans.

They were both in a frenzy to remove the barriers between them, to regain some semblance of the togetherness from which they'd just been wrenched, and so it seemed like an eternity before they had both shed their clothes and Elena climbed naked and flushed on top of his prone body to impale herself on his cock with a craving and desperation unlike any she'd ever known.

He thrust up his hips to meet her and she cried out, because although her mind and soul were desperate for this connection her body was unprepared to accommodate his considerable girth. She paused for a minute as she met his eyes, allowing herself to stretch and relax for a moment before she started moving over him, sliding up and down the length of him over and over and over as they groaned in pleasure and the affirmation that they were both alive, alive, alive.

"Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?" he asked her at one point, and the naked sincerity in his voice made butterflies dance in her stomach even as she worked herself on his cock.

She answered him with equal sincerity, saying, "I know how beautiful you think I am, and that's all that matters to me." With that she raked her fingers over the perfect, chiseled ivory of his chest.

He, in turn, reached up to grab a fist full of her hair and pull her down for a kiss, moaning into her mouth a the change in sensation caused by the angle of her hips as they shifted.

Elena gasped as well, feeling the teasing brush of her clitoris against his pelvic bone. She ground relentlessly against him as she felt the tidal wave of her orgasm start to creep up on her.

"Elena," he groaned.

"Damon," she gasped, "I'm so close... I want you to come with me... come with me, please..."

"Oh I will," he whispered into her ear, and she shuddered in his arms, resolving to write a book someday on the erotic powers of Damon's voice, "Just you wait, Princess. You are so fucking gorgeous, how could I not? But first I want to watch you. I'm going to watch you come on my cock and then, when I feel your muscles flutter and clench around me I'm going to come right here and now inside you, just for you, deep inside you... just because you want me..."

"I do want you, Damon," she moaned, "I want you so badly... I need you so badly... God... ah.. I love you so fucking much, Damon..."

And with that she broke apart, exploding into a thousand pieces and crying out with a scream that seemed somehow to be a part of her orgasm and not just a result of it, writhing and moaning as he held her hips hard enough to hurt and thrust up into her one final time before following her over the edge into oblivion.


	15. Nothing Gold Can Stay

Damon knew before he woke up that the whole thing was doomed to be a disastrous mess.

God, he had never known it could be like that. The sex, the blood sharing... the sheer bliss of reciprocated emotion... the glowing warmth of Elena's acceptance of him, her love for him and his for her.

And, he thought, ignorance is bliss. He wished he'd never had such a mind-blowing, intimate, perfect moment in his life, because he wasn't enough of a fool to believe he was going to get to keep it.

"Nothing gold can say," he whispered the old adage, like a mantra. Everything ends. Everything dies. He knew that this trip marked the end of his blissful tryst with Elena... he knew that once Stefan was healed she would be his again (still, rather, since she'd never actually been Damon's). Nothing gold can stay. But, still? Didn't most folks get to hold onto their golden dreams a little longer than this?

He stirred, stretched his stiff muscles, and looked around. The room stank of sweat and sex and death. Tremendous amounts of blood pooled and slowly dried into rusty sludge everywhere he looked. Elena was breathing quietly in the largest of the puddles, unconscious.

Elena... beautiful girl. Standing, he picked her up and cradled her tenderly. Her hair was matted, she was sticky, and his own blood ran in gory rivulets down her face and chest. He couldn't let her wake up like this.

He carried her sleeping body to the shower, and turned the taps to a soothing, warm flow.

He bathed her gently, caressing her skin reverently and trying to commit her soft, supple warmth permanently to his memory as the water coursed over them both. This was his time to make peace with this situation. This was his time to mourn how beautiful this thing was, which they had shared, as it came to an end. He cleaned them both slowly, methodically, as though anointing them with the bar of travel-sized soap, and just reveled in holding her close, being near her. The bulk of the blood on their skin was gone and he was softly massaging the cheap hotel shampoo into her hair when she began to stir.

"Damon," she whispered breathily as she awoke, "you're alive!'

The relief in her voice gave him hope against his will. God, hope was such a treacherous thing.

"Thanks to you, you idiot girl," he replied, tilting her head back to rinse out her hair. "You have got to stop throwing your life away for me. I've wasted twice as many years as you've lived. More."

She reached for him, but he pulled back, out from under the warm spray of the shower, against the cold tiles, leaving her to support her own weight. She looked at him in confusion.

"Elena," he sighed, "don't do this, please. I can't do this. You're going back to Stefan. I know it. I understand. I can't even ask you not to. Really, you should go back to him. But I can't live like this anymore."

She looked bewildered. "You don't mean that," she said. "I've seen your soul, Damon. I've seen..."

"I've seen yours too, Elena." He cut her off, unable to listen to her describing him through her own eyes. "You love me, I know. I actually believe it, which is a new feeling for me, and it is gorgeous... but... you love him too. I saw that in your mind. I saw your devotion, the purity of your feelings. You two are so, so in love... And he was yours first. God help me, he deserves you. He spends his eternity trying to be a better man. Not like me."

"Damon, I love you..." she pleaded, and opened her mouth again, no doubt about to assure him of how good she saw him trying to be, but he shook his head, stepping out of the shower to wrap himself in a towel.

"Yes, Elena, you love me. I think Stefan might love me too... And you two are the only people in 150 years or more who ever really have. Should I really repay that by destroying what's between you? I know I hate him half the time. I know he can't stand me. But he's my brother. And, you know, I've done some low-down, awful things in my life. But we just got him back for you, and I'd rather die than do you both so wrong at the same time."

She gaped, hearing the naked honesty in his words, wracking her brain for a response. And then he left the bathroom.

She turned off the water and dried herself off, feeling numb, finding a t-shirt and gym shorts of Stefan's to wear, and then combed the worst of the snarls out of her hair.

The two of them cleaned up the worst of the carnage in silence. It took a long, long time. There was so much blood... but if they left the hotel like that, someone would have to call the police, after all. When it was finally done, weary more from misery than from physical fatigue, they stumbled to their own room.

Damon was mildly shocked to find Katherine on his bed, looking disconcertingly innocent in Elena's clothes, except for the highball glass from the mini-bar that she'd filled with AB-positive, and the fact that her feet were propped up on Stefan's bound, unconscious body.

He thought he might have seen a spark of relief in her eyes as he came in, but with her you never knew... even such subtleties could be an act.

"You figured it out, then," Katherine drawled, and it took him a minute to realize she meant Elena. Katherine had taken care of Stefan, so Elena could save his life. This was a decision in which both women had participated. Interesting.

Elena nodded curtly.

"Good," Katherine replied. Then she turned to Damon.

"It's always different, you know, yet... somehow... it's always the same." She looked around the room. He wasn't sure exactly what she was referring to- the carnage, the heartbreak, the pang of bitterness and lust and longing he always felt when he looked at her, but it was all true, so he just sighed and nodded.

"I injected him again about thirty minutes ago," she explained, " to keep him under at least until you can get him into the car."

"Good thinking," Damon agreed.

"And then you can lock him up..." she trailed off.

"And listen to him scream for blood, until he starts begging for Bambi instead."

"You got it," she said with a smile, as they shared a moment of mutual exasperation at Stefan's obscenely disgusting eating habits. To his great surprise, he found himself returning the smile.

"Time for me to go," she said after a moment, and Damon found himself unexpectedly sad at the prospect. He nodded in silence, holding her gaze: the icy stare of his first love hiding behind Elena's soft, brown eyes.

"You- you don't have to," Elena muttered. Both Damon and Katherine turned to her in surprise. Would she ever, ever grow enough sense to stop forgiving people for trying to murder her?"

Katherine smiled. "Oh, yes I do," she said with a smirk. "This is your mess to figure out this time, Doppelganger." She swept her arm to gesture at the Salvatores. Then she paused, and when she spoke again it was slightly wistful. She caught Damon's gaze and held it for two long breaths before looking back to Elena.

"I just hope you do a better job of it than I did."

Was that an apology? Damon wondered to himself. It sounded like it just might be...

"Did you mean it?" Elena asked urgently as Katherine walked towards the door.

"Mean what?" the vampire replied.

"What you said the last time. What you said...before..."

_It's okay to love them both... I did._

Katherine smiled sadly.

"Yes," she said. "With all my heart."

And then, without a single backward glance. Katherine Pierce walked out of his life again


	16. Decisions

Gone. After all that... Stefan was gone.

They'd done it. They'd rescued him. They'd gotten Klaus out of the picture. They'd brought him home.

Gone.

During the nights Damon had come to her, despite what he said in the hotel. Like a man addicted, he sought solace in her arms from the violent, howling screams of his brother's withdrawal. Because she knew he wasn't there to protect her, to comfort her from her own distress. She'd seen his mind... she knew the guilt he carried, the burden of knowing that Stefan had only gone with Klaus in the first place to save his brother's life.

So she'd held him. She'd given him what he needed. She'd worked him through his grief.

And eventually, despite his protestations, he yielded to her needs as well, relenting when her tender embraces took a more sensual tone, and letting her lose herself in him, using his body to numb her own pain.

Still, despite all that, she felt like a dying man in the desert, because no amount of pleading, prodding, or anger could make him open up to her again. The glorious, gorgeous, life-changing togetherness they'd shared on the blood-soaked carpet of Klaus' hotel room was the one thing he would not let her have. He wouldn't take her vein. He wouldn't give her his own blood. He was reticent even to look too long into her eyes as he moved desperately within her. And so Elena was left with a two dimensional reminder of the heat that had once thrived between them, a thirst for belonging that she was totally unable to slake, and a numb, broken heart, all because Damon was trying to do the right thing for his little brother. For Stefan.

Stefan... who was gone.

She took the letter in her hand and folded it neatly before discarding it on the coffee table.

She didn't cry; she wasn't sure she even had tears left to cry anymore, but an overwhelming sense of emptiness came over her.

 _Elena,_ he had written, _I don't have the words to thank you for coming after me, for saving me from myself._

Sure, he had been grateful. But that, in the end, hadn't been enough.

Unable, after the Ripper was repressed again, to accept or move on from the brutal atrocities he had committed, Stefan had become reclusive, silent, and even more brooding than he normally was (if that was possible). He was totally lost, and had no way to find his way back to them.

Katherine had called and spoken to him, and, sensing that he was on the brink, offered to take him away from Mystic Falls. And he had accepted. He'd written his good bye in his old-fashioned, spindly cursive.

_I think, I hope, it will be easier to find the ability to forgive myself in the company of someone who has done things as evil as I have. You're too good for me, Elena. Now more than ever._

The bile rose in Elena's throat as she thought about it.

Sure, she thought, I'm a regular saint. That's why, when you were trapped in the cell downstairs detoxing from your addiction, I was sneaking out of the house at every possible moment to seduce your brother so he'd fuck me in the woods, in my house, in the backseat of my car... I wanted him any way I could get him. Even though I know it hurts him as much as finding out would hurt you. That's me. A real Mother Theresa.

As she was lost in thought, the brother in question stalked into the room, white knuckles clutched around his own letter. For a moment they just stared at each other.

"He's doing what he feels like he needs to do," Elena said, breaking the silence. "We can't be mad at him for that."

"The hell I can't," Damon growled, shaking his head. "Fuck him for this. Fuck him and his selfish, adolescent bullshit. He needs to remember he hasn't been a fucking teenager in _decades,_ and start acting like an adult."

"He needs to make peace with the things he's done," she said helplessly.

"Make peace with himself, my ass. He's a god-damned predator, Elena! This is his nature! It's what he's built for! You don't feel wracked with guilt every time you eat a cheeseburger. "

She stood and walked over to him, putting a hand on his chest to calm him. When he spoke next, in was in a much calmer tone, but he was looking at the floor and would not meet her eyes.

"I wanted to bring him back to you," he said in a despondent voice."This wasn't supposed to happen. You should be with him. You love him."

His misery forced her to find perspective in her own unhappiness.

"I do," she admitted, "But I can't force him to stay here if he's miserable. That won't make anyone happy. And he knew I wasn't going to be alone."

She raised a hand to stroke his cheek, but he brushed it away.

"Stop," he hissed.

"What?" she asked. "What did I do?"

"I can't," he said bitterly.

"You can't what?" she demanded, frustrated. "Now you can't touch me? That's sure as hell not how you felt in the shower this morning."

He raised his icy blue eyes to hers. "I can't just warm your bed indefinitely until he decides to waltz back into your life, Elena." His voice cracked as he said her name.

Something in his tone rankled her. They had been through so much together. How could he possibly think their time together meant so little to her?

"Is that what you think this has been?" she exclaimed in frustration, suddenly furious.

"I don't know what to think about 'this,' Elena! You're in love with my brother!"

Something inside her snapped.

"Goddammit!" she shouted in his face. "You are over 160 years old. We live in a town full of witches and werewolves and hybrid monsters and magic and you're a fucking vampire, for the love of God! How the fuck is it so hard to understand that I can love two people at the same fucking time? How is _that_ the impossible thing to believe?"

She stopped speaking abruptly, then, suddenly realizing the depth of truth in what she was saying. She did love them both. She loved both of them, madly and beyond reason. Maybe it wasn't "right," but then who was anyone else to question what was right or wrong for her?

Damon was looking at her again, his eyes much softer than a moment before.

"Did you just say you love me?"

She froze.

"I've said it before," she muttered, blushing to think of the scene back at the hotel. They both knew she said it then, and both had studiously tried to ignore it had ever happened. "You could read all of my thoughts. You know I meant it."

"Plenty of people have said they love me while I was... while we were in bed," Damon said in a neutral voice. "It doesn't mean anything."

The hollow tone spoke volumes. Elena's heart broke for him yet again. So broken, so alone. 160 years and change of feeling nothing but self loathing, or... or switching his emotions off and feeling nothing at all. She took a deep breath and approached him very slowly.

"Damon Salvatore," she said softly, looking deep into his eyes, "I. Love. You. I adore you. I will not ever leave you, and I wish to God you would stop trying to leave me. It is not better for me. I want you near me for the rest of my life. You are not expendable to me. I cannot imagine my future without you in it. Is that clear enough?"

He shook his head. "I don't understand how or why."

"Doesn't matter," she whispered, leaning towards him. "it's just the way it is." Her lips brushed his, but he turned his head to the side.

"And when he comes back?" he whispered, hoarse.

"When he comes back, I will still love you," she promised him. "That will never change. But I do love him too. And that's not ever going to change either."

He nodded, but pulled away just a bit, the warmth in his eyes cooling a few degrees. She grabbed both of his hands and willed him to understand the next words she spoke.

"Please, Damon. Don't do this. What I feel for you... It's... different. It doesn't feel like the same emotion. I don't want you to be jealous...there is no competition between you. I'm not a commodity- my affection isn't some finite thing that's going to run out eventually."

Damon took a deep breath and looked into her eyes. He didn't speak for a long, long time, contemplating her words with great deliberation. When he did, it was with a tiny, crooked, half-smile.

"You are absolutely terrifying when you make sense, you know that, right?" he said, and tears of relief sprang into her eyes as she laughed and put her arms around his shoulders. He gathered her into his lap, sinking back on the sofa to hold her against him as she spoke into his neck.

"I know it's weird. I know it probably isn't fair," she confessed. "I've just given up on any semblance of a normal life. We spend so much time, all of us, in mortal danger. Shouldn't we allow ourselves to be happy and feel good in the rare times when we have the chance?"

"I make you happy?" he whispered again, and the overwhelming tenderness had returned to his eyes.

She was going to cry, she was sure of it.

"Extremely happy," she replied, blinking away tears, "when you aren't asking stupid questions like that." She moved one hand up to cradle his cheek. He caught her fingers in his own hand, and she realized he was trembling.

"Yes," he said, a whisper that felt like a prayer. He bowed his head to touch his forehead to hers.

"Yes?" she replied in a breathless whisper. She didn't dare to hope.

"Yes. Yes to all of it," he said, leaning back so he could look into her eyes.

"Elena, I'm a borderline sociopath. I'm a killer. I've murdered more people than I can remember. People die regularly, just because they know me. I've hypnotized and basically date raped countless women just because I was bored, and I don't even feel guilty about it. I've even condemned more than a few people, including Caroline, to bear the same burden as I do, to share in my sins through the change.

"If you are actually able to look at me, to know what I've done, and tell me honestly that I can be loved, that I'm not hopeless... if you can make me feel like I want to be a better man... how could I possibly not try to accept that you _might_ just have enough love and compassion behind those beautiful brown eyes to save two of us?

"Stefan and I... we're both miserable bastards. You really are too good for both of us. We're broken. You should be with someone alive. Someone who can give you a future... a family. Both of us want that for you. It's about the only thing we agree on...

"But... you want us, and we're not strong enough to walk away. So... yes. I say yes. I'm yours, in whatever way you'll have me. And Stefan will say the same. Yes."

Elena was honesty and eloquence of his words literally took her breath away, until he looked at her thoughtfully and added, "But just Stefan, okay? Let's not make a habit of this. Swingers are really, really tiresome, normally."

She swatted him and laughed despite the tears in her eyes and the lump in her throat.

"It's a deal."

The smile he gave her then was absolutely dazzling. It warmed her from the roots of her hair to her toenails... and sent a familiar jolt of liquid fire to spark in the pit of her belly. She gasped, and the answering heat in his eyes stoked the flames. He gathered her into his arms with a low, feral growl that made her feel dizzy in its intensity. She thought she might faint from the depth of her emotions and desire.

And then, he kissed her.


	17. Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your time and attention!! I'd love to hear what you thought, if you're inclined to share. You know feedback nourishes the souls of the writers. ;-)

The kiss was soft and gentle, bordering on chaste. It was completely at odds with everything else they'd experienced together.

Joy, happiness, peace.

There had been precious few times in the many, many years Damon had lived when he'd touched a woman with a totally light heart. All of the girls in the early days had been shadowed by Katherine. The countless, nameless faces that came later were soured by the contempt a conscienceless vampire felt for his victims, and all he'd romanced since regaining his morality in Mystic Falls were tinged bitterly by the denial of his feelings for Elena. Even Elena herself had come with baggage- his brother's love; his own emotions were a betrayal of his family.

But today Elena melted into him without hesitation or reluctance. He kissed her almost in disbelief, dizzy and off-balance, like someone who had been straining against an obstacle with all of his might only to have it suddenly move and cause him to lose his footing. Perhaps, in the end, that was exactly what had happened. He sighed, overwhelmed by tenderness, closing his eyes to center himself.

"What's wrong?" Elena asked softly, the feel of her voice vibrating through his shoulder and neck, where her head rested.

"Nothing," he said, amused at himself for how dopey and Stefan-like he was behaving. He opened his arms wide as he stepped away and theatrically declared, "You've ruined me, Elena. You've stripped away the layers of tortured, misunderstood bad boy. There's nothing left but grinning idiot."

"Well the grin is a change, sure. But otherwise you're exactly the same idiot I fell in love with before. I think we'll manage to adjust somehow if you're cheerful, once in awhile."

He swatted at her lazily, and she leaped away and ran across the room, laughing because she knew he could catch her at any moment, eyes glittering because he was playing along and pretending she stood a chance.

When he grew tired of chasing her, he tumbled her onto the plush carpet and pinned her down, marveling at how much trust she displayed in her complete surrender, knowing how strong he was and how quickly he could kill her with a single swipe of his arm.

He ran his hands, light as a feather, all over her. He removed her clothes as though unwrapping a priceless, fragile treasure, and sighed appreciatively at the sight of her naked body laid out before him. Reverently, he worshiped her. He wanted to touch all of her, know all of her... and for once, he had what seemed like all the time in the world. She writhed beneath him, begging wordlessly for more. Unable to deny her anything, he bowed his head to taste her hot, molten core.

Elena moaned and a tremor ran through her body. That soft sound made him feel more powerful than any feat of strength or trick of vampirism ever could. And so with his dextrous tongue and the gentle touch of his hands he tried to show her his gratitude, praying at the altar of her body, trying to give her an offering of pleasure in return for her saving his broken soul.

When he finally crawled up her body to capture her mouth again she was quivering with pleasure and anticipation, clawing at his clothes, trying to rid him of them, and when she nicked her lip against one of his teeth, he groaned at the taste of her blood mixed with the earthy flavor of her sex.

He found his cold heart was pounding. Without the game of seduction, the danger of stolen moments, there was nothing to distract him from the sheer, incredible amount of love he felt for her, and he found himself as nervous as a blushing virgin.

A roll of her hips reminded him that his own body's needs had been completely neglected during his worship of Elena's gorgeous form. His cock was painfully hard in his jeans, and so senitive that the brush of the denim against his skin was almost too much. Quickly he stripped, coming to lie beside her and shivering at the touch of her hot, warm skin against his.

When he finally entered her, the tight, hot wetness of her center took his breath away.

"Elena..." he breathed, and she moaned a wordless reply, wrapping her arms around the back of his head and shoulders, while arching her back to draw him in closer. The angle the position afforded him was unspeakably good, deep, and hot. His bottom arm held her lithe body against him while the top arm ran feathery touches over her hips, breasts, and the apex of her thighs where they were joined.

It wasn't enough, though. He couldn't see her soul, couldn't share her thoughts. He needed more.

The strain of her body against his let him know she felt the same, and so he brought his wrist to his own mouth, tearing away the skin and held it to her mouth. Without hesitation she bowed her head to latch onto it, and her acceptance made him wonder at her once again. With love overflowing from him, he bent and pierced her neck.

Blood sharing... Her throat, his arm. And then for a few moments their crude physical forms seemed to vanish, as he tumbled head first into a flood of pure Elena.

It was not a frantic, panicked plea for him to live, as the last time had been. This connection was, warm and relaxed, but no less passionate. In fact, Damon found the moment to be overwhelming in its intimacy. But he couldn't stop. She was a shining golden flame and, like a moth, he was helpless to do anything but reach for her. When he finally touched her mind, it was exquisite.

Such a truly, honestly kind person... He thought with awe. She had suffered the loss of so much... Jenna, her parents... Yet, at only eighteen years old, she showed a compassion that eluded many far older and more worldly than her.

And she had so much love. Love for Jeremy and her friends, for Alaric and Matt and Bonnie and Caroline.

And love for Stefan. Colored now with worry and concern, the glowing ember of her affections for him was warmly protected in her mind. It was pure, the sweet devotion of one's first love, and so sincere and honest that Damon couldn't even muster the jealousy he would need to feel resentful, or upset, or anything other than happy, joyous acceptance that such a love existed in her life.

Especially while he was awash in the tumultuous storm of her love and passion for him.

Devotion, tenderness, frustration, and helpless, animal lust flooded his senses as he touched her mind with his own. The passion that emanated from her was so great that he suddenly remembered he had a physical body, and that it was very much alive.

His head fell back as he lifted it from her shoulder she dropped his wrist and the sight of his dark blood on her lips and chin was the most erotic sight he had ever seen.

Her eyes were glassy. She was drunk on him, literally. And the moans that were escaping from her throat as she licked the flavor of him off of her lips would have turned the most penitent monk to sin. And Damon was not a monk.

His lust was driven to impossible levels as he moved over this woman who loved him so much, whose blood was singing in his veins. He felt as though he was going to burst.

Not yet, though, he thought. Not yet. She is so close, you have to wait for her. As the tension built in him he reached down to wrap a hand around the base of his cock, trying to stave off the inevitable.

"Damon," groaned Elena, gazing at him through the fever haze of her passion. "Don't stop."

"Oh god Elena," he groaned, "I'm gonna come, beautiful girl. You feel so good, I can't stop it."

Elena's eyes darkened even more at those words, which encouraged him to keep going. She liked to hear him talk.  
He leaned over and whispered in her ear as he pistonned his hips into hers, moving higher and higher towards his own ecstasy.

"I want you to come too, beautiful girl. Right now. Come for me, come with me, oh, God I love you so much..."

And after that, speaking was impossible because the orgasm that washed over him was among the most powerful he had ever experienced. It exploded through his taught body, causing him to scream as he held himself up on trembling arms, vaguely aware of her spasming and crying out underneath him.

"I love you too," she whispered, moments or hours later, stroking his damp hair out of his face as she bent her head to kiss his lips, softly.

And for the first time in his life, Damon actually believed it, accepted it, and embraced it. And it felt wonderful.

They would meet whatever came towards them, and they would do it together. If and when Stefan returned to them, they would welcome him with open arms. He was loved, and he was not alone. And that, Damon realized, was the day his life began. He was home.


End file.
